A CD-R ( Compact Disc-Recordable ) is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once Read Many (WORM) optical medium, though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session.
CD-R retains a high level of compatibility with standard CD readers, unlike CD-RW - which can be re-written, but has lower compatibility and uses more expensive media.
History
The CD-R, originally named CD W rite- O nce (WO), specification was first published in 1988 by Philips and Sony in the 'Orange Book'. The Orange Book consists of several parts, furnishing details of the CD-WO, CD-MO ( M agneto- O ptic), and CD-RW ( R e W ritable). The latest editions have abandoned the use of the term "CD-WO" in favor of "CD-R", while "CD-MO" were very little used. Written CD-Rs and CD-RWs are, from a technical standpoint, fully compatible with the Audio CD (Red Book) and CD-ROM (Yellow Book) standards, although some hardware compatible with Red Book CDs may have difficulty reading CD-Rs and especially CD-RWs. They use Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation, CIRC error correction plus the third error correction layer defined for CD-ROM
CD-R recording systems available in 1990 were similar to the washing machine sized Meridian CD Publisher, based on the two-piece rack mount Yamaha PDS audio recorder costing USD 35,000 not including the required external ECC circuitry for data encoding, SCSI hard drive subsystem, and MS-DOS control computer. By 1992 the cost of typical recorders was down to $10-12,000, and in September 1995 Hewlett-Packard introduced its model 4020i manufactured by Philips, which at $995 was the first recorder to break the $1000 barrier.
The dye materials developed by Taiyo Yuden made it possible for CD-R discs to be compatible with Audio CD and CD-ROM discs.
Initially in the United States, there was a market separation between "music" CD-Rs and "data" CD-Rs, the former being several times more expensive than the latter due to industry copyright arrangements with the RIAA. Physically, there is no difference between the discs save for the Disc Application Flag that identifies their type: standalone audio recorders will only accept "music" CD-Rs to enforce the RIAA arrangement, while computer CD-R drives can use either type of media to burn either type of content.
Physical characteristics
A standard CD-R is a 1.2 mm thick disc made of polycarbonate with a 120 mm or 80 mm diameter. The 120 mm disc has a storage capacity of 74 minutes of audio or 650 MiB of data. CD-R/RWs are also available with capacities of 79 minutes, 59 seconds and 74 frames (marketed as 80 minutes) / 736,966,656 bytes (702 MiB), which they achieve by molding the disc at the tightest allowable tolerances specified in the Orange Book CD-R/CD-RW standards. The engineering margin that was reserved for manufacturing tolerance has been used for data capacity instead, leaving no tolerance for manufacturing--for these discs to truly be compliant with the Orange Book standard, the manufacturing process must be perfect.
Most CD-Rs on the market have an 80 minute capacity. There are also 90 minute/790 MiB and 99 minute/870 MiB discs, although they are less common (and violate the Orange Book standard; note that nothing in the Red, Yellow or Orange Book standards says that disc reading/writing devices may not have the capacity to read discs beyond the standard.) Some drives use special techniques to write more data onto a given disc, such as Plextor's GigaRec allowing as much as 1.2 GB to be recorded onto a 99 minute disc; these techniques inherently are deviations from the Compact Disc (Red, Yellow, and/or Orange Book) standards, making the recorded discs proprietary-formatted and not fully compatible with standard CD players and drives. However, in certain applications where discs will not be distributed or exchanged outside a private group and will not be archived for a long time, a proprietary format may be acceptable for greater capacity. Also, due to the limitations of the data structures in the ATIP (see below), 90 and 99 minute blanks will identify as 80 minute ones and have to be burned using "overburn" options in the CD recording software. (Overburning itself is so named because it is outside the written standards, but it has become a de facto standard function in most CD writing drives and software for them.)
(Note: While disc players and drives may have capabilities beyond the standards such that they are able to use nonstandard discs, there is no assurance, in the absence of explicit additional manufacturer specifications beyond normal Compact Disc logo certification, that any particular player or drive will perform beyond the standards at all or consistently. Furthermore, if the same device with no explicit performance specs beyond the Compact Disc logo initially handles nonstandard discs reliably but later stops doing so, there is no assurance that it can be fixed to do so again. Therefore, discs with capacities larger than 650 MiB and especially larger than 800 MiB are less interchangeable among players/drives and are not very suitable for archival use, as their readability on future equipment is not assured.)
The polycarbonate disc contains a spiral groove, called the "pregroove" (because it is molded in before data are written to the disc), to guide the laser beam upon writing and reading information. The pregroove is molded into the top side of the polycarbonate disc, where the pits and lands would be molded if it were a pressed (nonrecordable) Red Book CD; the bottom side, which faces the laser beam in the player or drive, is flat and smooth. The polycarbonate disc is coated on the pregroove side with a very thin layer of organic dye. Then, on top of the dye is coated a thin, reflecting layer of silver, a silver alloy, or gold. Finally, a protective coating of a photo-polymerizable lacquer is applied on top of the metal reflector and cured with UV-light.
A blank CD-R is not "empty"; the pregroove has a wobble (the ATIP), which helps the writing laser to stay on track and to write the data to the disc at a constant rate. Maintaining a constant rate is essential to ensure proper size and spacing of the pits and lands burned into the dye layer. As well as providing timing information, the ATIP (absolute time in pregroove) is also a data track containing information about the CD-R manufacturer, the dye used and media information (disc length etc). The pregroove is not destroyed when the data are written to the CD-R, a point which some copy protection schemes use to distinguish copies from an original CD.
There are three basic formulations of dye used in CD-Rs:
- Cyanine dye CD-Rs were the earliest ones developed, and their formulation is patented by Taiyo Yuden. CD-Rs based on this dye are mostly green in color. The earlier models were very chemically unstable and this made cyanine based discs unsuitable for archival use; they could fade and become unreadable in a few years. Many manufacturers like Taiyo Yuden use proprietary chemical additives to make more stable cyanine discs ("metal stabilized Cyanine", "Super Cyanine"). Older cyanine dye based CD-Rs, as well as all the hybrid dyes based on cyanine, were very sensitive to UV-rays and could have become unreadable after only a few days if they were exposed to direct sunlight. Although the additives used have made cyanine more stable, it is still the most sensitive of the dyes in UV rays (showing signs of degradation within a week of direct sunlight exposure). A common mistake users make is to leave the CD-Rs with the "clear" (recording) surface upwards, in order to protect it from scratches, as this lets the sun hit the recording surface directly.
- Phthalocyanine dye CD-Rs are usually silver, gold or light green. The patents on phthalocyanine CD-Rs are held by Mitsui and Ciba Specialty Chemicals. Phthalocyanine is a natively stable dye (has no need for stabilizers) and CD-Rs based on this are often given a rated lifetime of hundreds of years. Unlike cyanine, phthalocyanine is more resistant to UV rays and CD-Rs based on this dye show signs of degradation only after two weeks of direct sunlight exposure. However, phthalocyanine is more sensitive than cyanine to writing laser power calibration, meaning that the power level used by the writing laser has to be more accurately adjusted for the disc in order to get a good recording; this may erode the benefits of dye stability, as marginally written discs (with higher correctable error rates) will lose data (i.e. have uncorrectable errors) after less dye degradation than well written discs (with lower correctable error rates).
- Azo dye CD-Rs are dark blue in color, and their formulation is patented by Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation. Azo dye is also chemically stable, and Azo CD-Rs are typically rated with a lifetime of decades. Azo is the most resistant dye against UV rays and begins to degrade only after the third or fourth week of direct sunlight exposure. More modern implementations of this kind of dye include Super
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