DVD-RW
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A DVD-RW disc is a rewritable optical disc with equal storage capacity to a DVD-R, typically 4.7 GB.[1] The format was developed by Pioneer in November 1999 and has been approved by the DVD Forum. Unlike DVD-RAM, it is playable in about 75% of conventional DVD players.[citation needed] The smaller Mini DVD-RW holds 1.46 GB, with a diameter of 8 cm.
The primary advantage of DVD-RW over DVD-R is the ability to erase and rewrite to a DVD-RW disc. According to Pioneer, DVD-RW discs may be written to about 1,000 times before needing replacement, making them comparable with the CD-RW standard. DVD-RW discs are commonly used for volatile data, such as backups or collections of files. They are also increasingly used for home DVD video recorders. One benefit to using a rewritable disc is if there are writing errors when recording data, the disc is not ruined and can still store data by erasing the faulty data.
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One competing rewritable format is DVD+RW. Hybrid drives that can handle both, often labeled "DVD±RW", are very popular due to the lack of a single standard for recordable DVDs.
The recording layer in DVD-RW and DVD+RW is not an organic dye, but a special phase change metal alloy, often GeSbTe. The alloy can be switched back and forth between a crystalline phase and an amorphous phase, changing the reflectivity, depending on the power of the laser beam. Data can thus be written, erased and re-written.
There is now a new format called DVD-RW2[citation needed]. Older DVD burners are not all forward compatible with this new standard.[clarification needed]
The current fastest speed a DVD-RW disc can be written to is 6x speed, with many at this speed having DVD-RW2 capabilities.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- ISO/IEC 17342, 80 mm (1,46 Gbytes per side) and 120 mm (4,70 Gbytes per side) DVD re-recordable disk (DVD-RW)
- ISO/IEC 17342:2004 - publicly available standard
- Understanding Recordable & Rewritable DVD by Hugh Bennett
- DVD Forum
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