Should I Use a CD or DVD?

Now you know what kind of CD to get if you need to buy a CD, but do you need to buy a CD? What about DVDs? DVDs (Digital Versatile/Video Discs) are also discs that you can buy in most electronic stores and share the same versatility in R/RW & +/-, but are generally used for different purposes.

CDs do not hold as much information as DVDs. If you only need to store a small amount of information like a dozen songs or a few hundred pictures a CD will work just fine. If, on the other hand, you have a large collection of data to share, DVDs are best. The most common files found on a DVD are movie files. Movies are very large files since they are both a sequence of photos (think back to how videos were made way-back-when) as well as an audio track as long as the video.

One of the nice things about DVDs is that you can also get-- if your DVD-burner has the capability-- dual layer (DL) DVDs. Dual layer DVDs are like a layered cake. You have two layers of information on the disc so you can fit even more information on it. This is helpful if you have a particularly long video you wish to share.

So which should you use? DVDs are more expensive to make, and therefor buy, so I tell people to use CDs for everything they can, reserving DVDs for he special occasions you need to store a large amount of data on a physical disc.

Practical Tip of the Day:
Not sure if your computer can burn DVDs? If you have it, you can check the owner's manual, but if you're like most people and have no idea where that is, you can also check the front of disc drive on your PC. Often times it will tell you if it's able to read and write certain type of discs, and which variations it can handle. If you're using a Mac, going into "About This Mac" under the Apple menu (in the top left corner of the screen) will give you all the information about your computer, including a full listing of all the types of discs it supports.