CD writer

CD recorders, writers orrecorders are CD drives with which blank CDs can be written. A compact disc (CD) is written with a high-energy laser beam that burns pits into the light-sensitive layer with its crystalline and amorphous structure, thus changing the beam reflection during reading.

The burning process of a CD recorder takes longer than the reading process in a CD player. These specifications are given in multiples of the basic data rate as 4x (four times), 8x, 12x or 16x. Where the basic data rate for data transfer is 153.6 kB/s. A CD recorder with an 8x speed thus stores 1.228 kB/s.

The speeds cannot be increased at will, however, because centrifugal forces act on the blank at high rotation speeds.

The burning process can be carried out according to disc-at-once operation or track-at-once operation. In the former method, all tracks are written one after the other. In track-at-once, writing is done track by track.

In CD recorders, write-once and rewritable CDs such as the CD-R, DC- RW and CD+RW can be written.