Want to take the mystery out of buying that DVD drive?

In todays market you can be easily confused by all of the choices you have when it comes to buying a DVD recorder for your computer system. DVD recorders come in many flavors DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, as well as single and dual layer models. + media and media were developed separately and you can not assume that all older models of DVD recorders will be compatible with both formats. R media in written once and can be added to but not changed. RW media is capable of being erased and reused like a floppy disk or hard drive

The great thing about todays drives is that most of the recorders being produced today are compatible with both + and formats as well as R and RW formats. Single layer DVDs hold about 4.71 GB worth of data while dual layer DVDs hold about 9 GB of data. HD DVDs and Blue Ray DVDs, which are entering the market, have capacities ranging from about 25GB up to 100 GB. For most applications you should look for a recorder that will record DVD+/-R and DVD+/-RW. One note of interest if you are using these drives to backup you data; R media in my opinion appears to be more stable for long term storage than the current RW media.