Opti ical Medi: i ji eee a and Optical Storage Devices y burning ‘dots’ onto the surface with a high-powered laser. * The data th lat reads the media ¢: i over thie'do. ‘an read the data by shining a lower-powered laser CD-R/DVD-R Uses: * Hot : me recordings of music and (CD-R) and films (CD-R). © Used to st store data to be kept for later use to be transferred to another computer. Advantages: * Cheaper medium than RW disks. * Once burned (and finalised), they behave like a ROM. Disadvantages: Itcan only be recorded once; ifn error occurs, then the disk has to be thrown away. «Not all CD/DVD players can read CD-R/DVD-R. CD-RW/DVD-RW Uses: « Used to record television programs which can be recorded over, time and time again. Used in CCTV systems. « Itcanbe used as a backup device for files and data. Advantages: imes. 5 Itcan be written over many til formats each time itis used. can use different file les/data can be added later « You he R format because the fil « Itisnotas wasteful as t Disadvantages: ensive media. n be relatively &*P « Itcat ally overwrite data « Possible to accident« CD-ROM/DVD-ROM Uses: « These are read-only memory (ROM), can only be read. Permanent storage method. which means they can't be written over and * CD-ROM is used to store music files and to store software, computer games and reference software. « DVD-ROM has much larger storage and is used to store films. * Used in applications where there is a real need to prevent deletion or overwriting of important data. Advantages: « They are less expensive than hard disk drive systems. « They are very portable as they are small and light. * Data stored on them is read-only, so it cannot be accidentally overwritten. Disadvantages: * Hold far less data than hard disk drives or memory sticks. * Very slow data transfer rate and data access times, as compared to hard disk drives. * You cannot add your own files to the disks because they are both read-only. Blu-Ray Discs The main differences between DVD and Blu-ray are: 1. Blu-ray uses a blue laser rather than a red laser. (The wavelength of blue light is 405nm, much smaller than the 650nm red laser) This makes pits and lands much smaller, so they store five times more data than DVDs. 2. Blu-ray disks automatically come with a secure encryption system, which helps to prevent piracy and copyright infringement. 3. The data transfer rate for a DVD is 10 Mbps, and for a Blu-ray disc, it is 36 Mbps.Uses: * Home video Consoles, * Storing and Playing back Movies, * Computers can Use this technolo By for data storage or backin ig hard drives, * Camcorders can use this media to store Movies, Advantages: © Very large Storage Capacity, * Very fast data transfer rate, * The data access Speed is also greater than with other optical media. * Blu-ray discs automatically come with a secure encryption system. Disadvantages: * Relatively expensive discs, * Encryption problems when used to store videos. * The introduction of HD (high definition) DVD players has reduced the advantages of using Blu-ray technology. Solid State Backing Storage * Holds data on devices that don't have any moving devices. Solid-state drives (SSD) Uses: * storage device to store files, applications, OSs, and so on. Advantages: * They are more reliable as they have no moving parts. They are considerably lighter, and suitable for laptops. They do not have to ‘get up to speed’ before they work correctly, + They have lower power consumption. + Theyrun much cooler than HDDs. Because of no moving parts, they are very thin, * SSD data access time is only 0.1 milliseconds compared to 10 milliseconds for HDD. * Data transfer speed for SSDs is also much faster than for HDDs.