It was in the 1980s that the CD technology started creating huge waves with the consumers. This can be primarily attributed to the fast-gaining popularity of the audio CDs at that time. With the advent of this trend, more and more CDs started getting used for storing computer programs. A standard for ReWritable (RW) i.e. erasable CDs, called the “Mount Rainer format” was developed by Compaq (now HP), Microsoft, Philips, and Sony. This format is also known as CD-MRW. The format rapidly gained acceptance as a universal standard for native operating system support and CD-RW drives. Setting of these standards was a major contributor to the CD’s success because these standards enabled the CDs to enjoy compatibility with a wide range of systems across geographies.
CDs support three different formats; CD-R i.e. Recordable format, CD-ROM i.e. Ready-Only Memory format, and CD-RW format. The 1990s unveiled the Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) technology, a highly advanced technology as compared to CDs. The DVD market has indeed challenged the CD market with its highly adaptable technology. The DVDs support five different formats; audio format, read-only data format, feature-length motion pictures format, write-once-read-many data format, and rewritable data format. In addition, it has a higher density data storage than a CD i.e. a lot more data can be stored on a DVD as compared to a CD. This is because there is a lot of extra information encoded on the CD, which is needed for error correction activity. This extra information is of repetitive nature and consumes more CD space thereby leaving less disk space for data storage. On the contrary, an error correction activity on a DVD format does not waste data storage space, thus allowing it to store as much as seven times more data than a CD. Therefore, whereas a CD can hold only up to 700MB of data, a DVD can hold anything between 4.7 to 9.4 GB of data. However, let us not be hasty in writing off CDs due to the above-mentioned differences. Though a DVD may sound advantageous, a CD has its own set of positive factors. Let us factor in these advantages and analyse what benefits can still be provided by CDs.
Advantages of Storing Data on a CD
- CDs can write data very quickly and easily, making them ideal for transferring large amounts of data. A CD can be written in less than 3 minutes as compared to a DVD, which takes around 15 minutes.
- CDs are lightweight, yet very durable, making them ideal for portable data storage. In addition, every computer maker offers built-in or external CD drives or even a combo drive that handles CDs as well as DVDs. Therefore, data storage on a CD drive eases the consumer’s mind about compatibility problem with any system. This also makes them an excellent archiving solution.
- CDs provide an excellent data storage medium for multimedia content and universal playability for making business presentations. Imagine going for a sales presentation and not being able to play your presentation in the desired format. All computers and notebooks support the format for playing CDs, making it ideal for storing data you might need to use at remote locations. CDs can be especially beneficial for storing content that you want to display at your own pace. In addition, if you want to distribute the content of your sales pitch at the end of the presentation to your customer, CDs will be the most inexpensive yet best choice.
- Obsolescence is one of the key issues that trouble the consumers in the technology industry, especially when it comes to data storage. You do not want to store your data in one media and then suddenly find out that the media is no longer available. This would mean that you would have no company support in the event of anything going wrong with the data storage device. The CD manufacturing industry primarily consists of all multinational companies, unlike the other data storage market. Therefore, storing data on CDs allows you to have constant solution support, unlike companies that offer data storage devices but provide no solution support after sometime.
- The cost benefits of CDs are still far superior to other data storage devices. The CDs are very inexpensive and cost only a fraction of a cent per megabyte. We can appreciate this fact better when we compare this to the expensive cartridges or hard drives available in the market. In addition, the prices of CDs only fall further as and when the new data storage devices keep coming into the market.
- The predicted lifespan of a recordable CD is 30 years. Even though it is far less than that of a DVD, which is 70 years, it is still far greater than the lifespan of magnetic discs and tapes.