Most people tend to think that a DVD Burner is a better option than a CD Burner for data back-ups either in the office or at home but once you look at the options you can see why CD Burners are still available in the market and is no-where near an era of old technology.


Before one goes out and purchases a CD Burner or DVD Burner the reason for having the Burner needs to be looked at allowing the best choice to be selected.

So what is a DVD Burner useful for?

A DVD Burner is useful for when you are looking to copy or duplicate a DVD disc or to burn video files into DVD Format so they can be played on a home DVD player. DVD discs allow Gigabytes of Data to be burned to the disc, in some cases a whole hard drive of data, making a tempting choice to use as a data back-up tool.

One needs to remember though that you will need a DVD-ROM to have the ability to read the data that was burned onto the disc, if you are in a office environment and need to use the disc on multiple PC’s then this may cause an issue as most PC’s in an office don’t come installed with a DVD-ROM – if they do then it’s a waste of money on the IT departments part.

DVD media has no advantage when it comes to burning Audio files such as MP3’s as DVD discs cannot be read on a normal CD-ROM or CD Player not leaving much of point on why you would burn audio to a DVD Disc.

So what is a CD Burner useful for?

Although CD Burners are somewhat slower than today’s DVD burners they do have more pros than con’s when comparing to a DVD Burner for data back-ups. Blank media Discs for CD Burners are either 650MB or 700MB in size, yes a lot smaller than that of a DVD disc.

CD-R discs can either hold data or audio and can be read in almost any CD-ROM and if the CD-R is made into an audio disc then its possible to read the disc in a Hi-Fi or a car CD Player – you will need to make sure the drive has the ability to read CD-R media, most newer models of CD-Players are compatible to read CD-R media.

Another pro of CD-R’s and CD-RW’s is the fact that you can burn video files such as MPEG or AVI onto disc so that they can be read in a home DVD player – most newer models of DVD players are mutli-read compatible meaning they can recognize CD-R’s or CD-RW’s.

So as you can see a back-up made with a DVD Burner is less compatible than a back-up made from a CD-Burner –Think wisely before purchasing any form of data back-up and ask yourself what is your need and how will be used.

Gavin Duncan is the editor and publisher of http://www.cd-burner-help.com, a site to help people facing problems with Burning CD’s.