Hi there,

I'm a novice. Could someone please explain to me the difference between CD+RW and CD-RW. In particular what the + and - signs mean. I want to buy some backup discs for my computer and I'm not sure which is best. I have a LG DVD/CD multi recorder DVD/CD rewritable drive. It's an LG GSA-4160B.

TIA :)
Pete :cool:

In order to confuse the public various manufacturers decided to split into two camps.The + and the - formats.The plus format is supported by Philips,Sony,Hewlett-Packard,Dell,Ricoh,and Yamaha.The minus is supported by Panasonic,Toshiba,Apple,Hitachi,Nec,Pioneer,Sharp, and Samsung.Yes you've guessed,which is best?
The - (minus) format DVD burners will also support the + (plus) format.But the + (plus) DVD burners will not support the - (minus) format! Got that?
All the difference between the two is code,pride,and er,money.
Microsoft are supporting the + (plus) camp the last time I read up on them.But they will probably edge their bets,and end up supporting both camps. :eek:
Hope your not too confused.

Thanks Nez,

I'm still a little confused but I get the gest of it.

Pete

Hi,
For backups, I highly suggest using the non-rewritables; such as CD-R.
Reason?
You could grap a cd-rw, write over it, and then wish you hadn't; due to needing the backup you just wrote over!

CD-R's are cheap, about 15 dollars US for 30 or 40 at a large well-known department store.
At one time, I burned a backup of Outlook Express email onto CD-RW's.
Later, when I needed them badly, I discovered I had burned over top of them by mistake!

Best wishes,
fredg

Thanks Fred,

Good points. I think I will go for cd-r's.

Is there any difference between those and dvd-r's?

Cheers
Pete :cool:

A few main differences between CD-R and DVD-R:

1. Sheer size. A CD-R can typically hold 800MB of data, while a DVD-R can hold 4.7GB or 9.4GB (4700 MB or 9400 MB, depending on if it's single sided or double-sided)

2. What hardware do you have/can you afford? - You can't create DVD-R's on a CD-R drive. Just like you (usually) can't play a movie DVD in your music CD player. But if you're out shopping for something new, DVD recorders can be fairly reasonably priced these days (I think), and in many instances you can create CD-R's with your DVD recorder.

3. Price of media. Let's assume you have a full 20GB drive. It would take approximately 25 CD-R's to copy the entire contents of your drive. These disks are available (in larger quantities) for about 22 cents each, costing $5.50. If one CD gets lost or damaged, you have 800MB lost (4% of your data is now gone) Found some cheapie 4.7GB DVD-R cd's, listed at 39 cents per disk, but now it'll only take 5 CD's (4 and some leftover), costing $1.56. But now if you lose or damage 1 cd, almost 25% of your data may be gone.

Isn't it fun weighing benefits vs. consequences?

Hi there,

I'm a novice. Could someone please explain to me the difference between CD+RW and CD-RW. In particular what the + and - signs mean. I want to buy some backup discs for my computer and i'm not sure which is best. I have a LG DVD/CD multi recorder DVD/CD rewritable drive. it's an LG GSA-4160B.

TIA :)
Pete :cool:
I'm a novice. Could someone please explain to me the difference between CD+RW and CD-RW. In particular what the + and - signs mean. I want to buy some backup discs for my computer and I'm not sure which is best.