What is an Optical Disk?
Simply stated, an optical disk is a plastic, glass, or metal disk ranging in size from 1.8″ to 14″. Information is stored on the disk by means of micro-sized pits that are written and read using a laser beam. 2.2 How Do Optical Recorders and Players Work? They use a highly sophisticated but relatively inexpensive tracking system to lock a laser beam onto one of tens of thousands of circular tracks on the disk to record or read information on that track. The pattern of bits contains the information for that track, which may represent pictures, sound, video, numerical data, or any other form of information. In simple terms: One digital bit per pit! Click here to continue : 3.
An optical disk is a compact disk or CD. The formatting of the optical disk will dictate whether it is a DVD, CD, read-only or rewritable. Optical disks have replaced vinyl records, cassette tapes, videotapes and floppy disks. The optical disk became the preferred medium for music, movies and software programs because of its many advantages. Compact, lightweight, durable and digital, the optical disk also provides a minimum of 650 megabytes (MB) of data storage. A double-layered and double-sided DVD optical disk holds up to 15.9 gigabytes (GB) of data. The optical disk is so named because its technology is based on light. As the disk spins, a laser beam follows a spiraling trail of pits and lands in the plastic material of the disk. The pits reflect light differently than the lands, while a device translates the reflective difference to bits of “on/off” or 1 and 0. The bits form bytes that carry the digital code of the data stored on the optical disk. A standard optical disk measures 4
• Allows users to copy, or back up, selected files. • Reorganizes the files and unused space on a computer’s hard disk so the operating system can access data more quickly. • Compiles technical information about your computer’s hardware and certain system software programs and then prepares a report outlining any identified problems.
