All About DVD Writer Technology

In the world of data storage, DVD (Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc), holds a very important place. They are used for the storage of both video and data. Like CD or compact discs, D.V.D shares the same physical dimensions, yet its storage capacity is much higher. A DVD can store up to six times more data than a CD. This is one primary reason why DVDs are so popular today.

Just like a CD writer one can find D.V.D writers also. A Digital Video Disk writer is a drive that records or writes onto blank DVDs. It can burn movies or data onto a blank D.V.D, and in some cases it can also overwrite existing data (DVD-RW). While a DVD-Rom only reads and cannot write, a Digital Video Disc writer can do both. With the help of DigitalVD writers, one can make their own movie discs. A DigitalVD writer can help in reducing the cost of home theatre production. In the past, you would have had to hire a production company to make home video. Now, you can burn it yourself onto Digital Video Disc!

Internal and external are two types of hardware that writers are available in. The difference is simply that internal drives can be mounted directly into your desktop tower chasis. External drives cannot, however they are more transportable and can be moved quickly from one computer to another. The internal writers are usually less expensive.

There are four different DVD speeds, namely CAV, CLV, PCAV, and ZCLV. In CAV or constant angular velocity, the Digital Video Disc is written at a constant increasing speed. In CLV or constant linear velocity, the Digital Video Disc is written at a constant speed. In zone constant linear velocity or ZCLV, the disk is divided into various zones and the speed is increased after each zone is written. While a Digital Video Disc is being written, the speed increases to some maxmimum after which it levels out. This is what happens when PCAV or Partial Constant Angular Velocity takes place. The average speed to write any type of media is presently 16x. The average speed for rewrite is 4x.

A DVD writer uses various kinds of interfaces like SCSI, IDE FireWire and USB. An internal writer generally supports IDE interface compatibility. While external products may require some other kind of interface. External models most commonly use Firewire, which is fitted in the PCI slot of a computer. But now-a-days more and more Digital Video Disc writers are using USB 2.0 that offer speeds up to 480Mbps.

In order to install a DVD writer, a minimum configured system is required. If you are choosing to create an image of a disk onto your hard drive, you will need at least 4.7GB of hard drive space free to do it. That will be twice as much for a dual layer Digital Video Disc.