CD-ROM (an abbreviation of 'Compact Disc Read-Only Memory') is a compact disc that contains data accessible by a computer. While the compact disc format was originally designed for music storage and playback, the format was later adapted to hold any form of binary data. CD-ROMs are popularly used to distribute computer software, including games and multimedia applications, though any data can be stored (up to the capacity limit of a disc). Some CDs hold both computer data and audio with the latter capable of being played on a CD player, whilst data (such as software or digital video) is only usable on a computer. These are called Enhanced CDs.

Although many people use lowercase letters in this acronym, proper presentation is in all capital letters with a hyphen between CD and ROM.

CD-ROM discs are identical in appearance to audio CDs, and data is stored and retrieved in a very similar manner (only differing from audio CDs in the standards used to store the data). Discs are made from a 1.2 mm thick disc of polycarbonate plastic, with a thin layer of aluminium to make a reflective surface. The most common size of CD-ROM disc is 120 mm in diameter, though the smaller Mini CD standard with an 80 mm diameter, as well as numerous non-standard sizes and shapes (e.g. business card-sized media) are also available.

Data is stored on the disc as a series of microscopic indentations ('pits', with the gaps between them referred to as 'lands'). A laser is shone onto the reflective surface of the disc to read the pattern of pits and lands. Because the depth of the pits is approximately one-quarter to one-sixth of the wavelength of the laser light used to read the disc, the reflected beam's phase is shifted in relation to the incoming beam, causing destructive interference and reducing the reflected beam's intensity. This pattern of changing intensity of the reflected beam is converted into binary data.

Standards

There are several formats used for data stored on compact discs, known collectively as the Rainbow Books. These include the original Red Book standards for CD audio, White Book and Yellow Book CD-ROM[1]. ISO 9660 defines the standard file system of a CD-ROM, although it is due to be replaced by ISO 13490. UDF format is used on user-writable CD-R and CD-RW discs that are intended to be extended or overwritten. The bootable CD specification, to make a CD emulate a hard disk or floppy, is called El Torito. Apparently named this because its design originated in an El Torito restaurant in Irvine, California.

CD-ROM format

A CD-ROM sector contains 2352 bytes, divided into 98 24-byte frames. The CD-ROM is, in essence, a data disk, which cannot rely on error concealment, and therefore requires a higher reliability of the retrieved data. In order to achieve improved error correction and detection, a CD-ROM has a third layer of Reed-Solomon error correction.[2] A Mode-1 CD-ROM, which has the full three layers of error correction data, contains a net 2048 bytes of the available 2352 per sector. In a Mode-2 CD-ROM, which is mostly used for video files, there are 2336 user-available bytes per sector. The net byte rate of a Mode-1 CD-ROM is 44.1k×2048/(6×98) = 153.6 kB/s. The playing time is 74 minutes, or 4440 seconds, so that the net capacity of a Mode-1 CD-ROM is 682 MB.

A 1x speed CD drive reads 75 consecutive sectors per second.

CD Sector Contents

* A standard 74 min CD contains 333,000 sectors.
* Each sector is 2352 bytes, and contains 2048 bytes of PC (MODE1) Data, 2336 bytes of PSX/VCD (MODE2) Data, or 2352 bytes of AUDIO.
* The difference between sector size and data content are the Headers info and the Error Correction Codes, that are big for Data (high precision required), small for VCD (standard for video) and none for audio.
* If extracting the disc in RAW format (standard for creating images) always extract 2352 bytes per sector, not 2048/2336/2352 bytes depending on data type (basically, extracting the whole sector). This fact has two main consequences:
o Recording data CDs at very high speed (40x) can be done without losing information. However, if done the same with PlayStation or Audio CD it will result in an unreadable PlayStation disc or an audio CD with lots of clicks because there are no error correction codes and the errors are more likely to occur at high speed recording.
o On a 74 minute CD can fit very large RAW images, up to 333,000 × 2352 = 783,216,000 bytes (747 MiB). This should be the upper limit for a RAW image created from a 74 min CD. If the stored standard data (backup files), it can burn only 333,000 × 2048 = 681,984,000 bytes (650 MiB).
* Please note that an image size is always a multiple of 2352 bytes (the size of a block) when extracting in RAW mode.

Manufacturing a CD-ROM

Pre-pressed CD-ROMs are mass-produced by a process of stamping, where a glass master disc is created and used to make 'stampers', which in turn are used to manufacture multiple copies of the final disc with the pits already present. Recordable (CD-R) and rewritable (CD-RW) discs are manufactured by a similar method, but the data is recorded on them by a laser changing the properties of a dye or phase change material in a process that is often referred to as 'burning'.

Capacity of a CD-ROM

A standard 120 mm CD-ROM holds 650 or 700 MiB of data. To put this storage capacity into context, the average novel contains 60,000 words. Assume that average word length is 10 letters and that each letter occupies one byte. A novel therefore might occupy 600,000 bytes (600 kB, without layout information). One CD can therefore contain over 1,000 novels. If each novel occupies at least one centimetre of bookshelf space, then one CD can contain the equivalent of over ten metres of bookshelf. However textual data can be compressed by more than a factor of ten, using compression algorithms, so a CD-ROM can accommodate at least 100 metres of bookshelf space.

In comparison a single layer DVD contains 4.4 GiB of data, nearly 7 times the amount of a CD-ROM.


Wikipedia information about CD. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License . It uses material from the Wikipedia article 'CD-ROM'