[Wlug] DVD writeable media

[doug waud]

Andy Stewart wrote:
> 
> The message thread about DVD writers makes me think that there are many
> standards or types of writeable DVD media that not all drives can handle 
> - is
> this true?
> 
> Could somebody compare/contrast the different types?

That PCWorld article I mentioned earlier in this thread
has a nice table. The first step is to note that there are
three pairs:

	DVD-R and DVD-RW
	DVD+R and DVD+RW
	CD-R  and CD-RW

plus one single,

	 DVD-RAM

which (so far) has no RW sibling.
(I include CD's to emphasize the pattern)

That article also has a table:

Type 		Can be written to by drives of type

	DVD-RW	DVD+RW	DVD-RW/+RW DVD-RAM/-R/-RW	DVD-RAM/-R

DVD-R 
yes 
no 
yes 
	yes		yes
DVD+R 
no 
yes 
yes 
	no		no
CD-R 
yes 
yes 
yes 
	yes		no

DVD-RW 
yes 
no 
yes 
	yes		no
DVD+RW 
no 
yes 
yes 
	no		no
DVD-RAM 
no 
no 
no 
	yes		yes
CD-RW 
yes 
yes 
yes 
	yes		no

and with same rows:

Capac 
Cost 
Cartrige? 
Quick Format	Data verifn

4.7GB 
$4 
no 
	n/a		no
4.7 
5 
no 
	n/a		no
700MB 
1 
no 
	n/a		no
4.7 
6 
no 
	optional	no
4.7 
7 
no 
	yes		no
4.7* 
15 
yes** 
	n/a***		yes
700 
1 
no 
	no		no

and still with same rows:

Defct Mngmt	Max Rewrites	Seq/Rand	Data/video?

	no	n/a		seq		video
	no	n/a		seq		video
	no	n/a		seq		video & data
	no	1000		seq		data
	yes****	1000		seq		data
	yes	100,000		random		data
	no	1000		seq		data
	
* double sided gives 9.4 GB
** disks also available w/o cartridges on a spindle
*** DVD-RAM disks are preformatted
**** only on Mount Ranier writes which are not supported by most drives

Hope the formatting survives!  :-)

doug