It's confusing.

It's now possible to create your own CDs easily and very cheaply, but what is the difference between CD-Rs and CD-RWs.

How does it all work?

With ordinary CD-R CDs, once created or "burned", as it is called, they become a read-only medium, just as if you had a normal CD which you may have bought commercially with some program or other software on it. You cannot use it to put your own files on it as you would with a floppy disk, even if you have a CD Writer as your CD-ROM drive. The CD-R you create can usually be read by an standard CD-ROM drive.

But, and here's the rub, and not usually made obvious by the manufacturers, if you use CD-RW CDs (they cost a little bit more than CD-Rs), you *can* read and write to them as if they were a floppy disk or hard disk. However they are created in a different manner.

They first have to be formatted using the standard CD creator software which comes with the CD the two most common being Adaptec/Roxio's CD Creator (used for CD-R) or Direct CD (for CD-RWs) & Nero Burning software. In Windows XP such software is integrated into the operating system.

Once formatted, the CD-RW can be used just like any read-write medium; you can read, add and delete files to it, BUT only in a CD-RW drive NOT in an ordinary CD-ROM.

CD Writers are now very inexpensive and the media, both CD-Rs and CD-RWs cost from a few pence to no more than £1 per piece, respectively.

It's possible to also copy commercial music CDs, to CD-Rs, but it is a breach of copyright. If you do, we couldn't possibly comment!