Concept in Definition ABC
Miscellanea / / July 04, 2021
By Marcos Guglielmetti, on Sep. 2008
A CD-ROM is a flat plastic disk that contains digital information in the form of a spiral. It's about a standard set by Philips and Sony in 1985 that exceeded the quality of vinyl records, cassettes and any other popular means of broadcasting music.
Although at first CD ROMs were played on music equipment or also called "musical centers" (and in general, in any audio player that would carry space to place them), the popularity of CD ROMs is due in large part to the exponential growth of the use of computers.
On the other hand, although they were designed to transport audio / music, they are also used, and in a massive way, to transport computer data of any kind, for example, entire operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, GNU / Linux or BSD; and software of any kind: graphic design, 3D animation, etc.
The Compact Disc Read Only Memory or CR-ROMs They can only be read and not written, unlike CD-R or CD-RW, commonly called "blank CDs" precisely because they are "empty" and therefore can be written (and then read). The big difference between a CD-ROM and a CD-R / RW is that CD-ROMs are mass-produced by the large industry, while CD-R / RWs are generally sold empty for end-users to record there information. In addition, there is another difference between CD-R and CD-RW: CD-R can be written and once they have been, they can only be read on computers, CD players, etc. On the other hand, CD-RWs are the famous “rewritable” CDs, which can be written, read, and we can even delete information, add or modify files that are inside it. In addition, the process of
manufacturing CD-ROMs are stamped, while CD-R / RWs are burned by laser.Since 1987 the computer giants began to spread the idea that CD-ROMs would produce a revolution in the field of computers, and so it was: his great capacity of storage (650 to 700Mb approx.) Allowed to multiply 500 times or more the storage capacity of a floppy disk of those times. A CD-ROM could hold 1000 average novel books in Format from text digital.
From a few years ago to the present, CD-ROMs are less and less used, being replaced by DVDs for obvious reasons: the latter have between 6 and 11 times more storage capacity, being able to save movies in higher quality, more audio and all kinds of data (photos, etc.) massively. Many associate the word DVD to the disc that carries movies, but the reality is that it has Exactly the same functions as a CD-R, CD-RW or CD-ROM only with greater capacity storage.
Even though it has not yet achieved enough popularity, another form of portable storage was launched a few years ago: the Blue Ray, a disk that can store up to 100GB of data, although it has primarily been used by the film industry for the commercialization of movies, due to the optimal definition with which they can be recorded on this type of disc.
Topics on CD-ROM