[lightheart]

This is decluttering and organizing my computer question <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.mothering.com/discussions/images/smilies/smile.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="smile"><br><br>
I have a computer.<br>
I have pictures on my computer.<br>
I want to put those pictures on either a DVD or a CD, just to have as a backup and to clear some space.<br>
When I bought the computer 2-3 years ago I was told it had a dvd writer and on the front of the tower it has written "hp dvd writer / cd-writer combo".<br><br>
I went to the store to buy discs so I could organize my pictures and got so totaly utterly confused on which disc to buy, they had + - R RW and all these different speeds and sizes.<br><br>
I have no idea what to buy, I do know I want the rewriteable RW (I think) and I was told at the store I needed to go home and look at my computer and find out if it was the + or - and what speed????<br><br>
Can someone tell me how to find this information on my computer, Thanks!

 

[rainyday]

On my computer, it's in small letters on the DVD/CD door.<br><br>
One other note - think about burning two CDs or DVDs. I had one CD that somehow got corrupted and I can no longer open any of the files on it. It's a good thing I have prints from that era because the digital files are gone.

 

[lisalulu]

Are you sure your drive is rewritable? From the name on the front you stated, it sounds like it could be just a burner?<br><br>
I think the speeds are the rate that it burns and the rate that it rewrites-your drive should have a set speed that it does these-I think. I don't have a rewriter-maybe someone who does will know more? For just our burner, I never paid attention to the speed that it writes when I bought CD-R's. I think the max rate on the ones I buy is 52X. Maybe they all are?<br><br>
Size should just be how much you want to store on it. I think 700mb is pretty typical. But this is just for CD-R's-not sure if its different for CD-RW.<br><br>
I don't have a DVD burner but the idea (I think) should be similiar but lots more storage space and slower speed.

 

[MommytoTwo]

Do you really want rewritable though - you want to put those pics on a dvd and keep them forever, not rewrite over it..<br><br>
I also find this stuff super confusing... I always defer to DH on this..he is a computer guy..

 

[Ygle]

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<div>Originally Posted by <strong>lightheart</strong> <a href="/community/forum/post/7974812"><img alt="View Post" class="inlineimg" src="/community/img/forum/go_quote.gif" style="border:0px solid;"></a></div>
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Can someone tell me how to find this information on my computer, Thanks!</div>
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Do you have windows? on windows xp if you go to start, control panel,<br>
system, and then under the hardware tab is the device manager and it should list all the components. I think really you are only limited by the speed and I still don't think it matters which media you buy, you just will just be limited by the speed of your burner as to how fast you can burn (although I've had really fast burners that I wasn't able to burn at max speed without all sorts of errors on the dvd because my computer system wasn't up to the task). I wouldn't use RW for backing up pictures, because it is able to be rewritten over it is more easily damaged... I use a back up external hard drive to back up my pictures because even the non RWs can still get easily damaged (but I have dvd R back up of pictures as well that I keep out of the house, just in case). The only issue I've had with +R or -R are some dvd players (for tvs) won't recognize both formats, but I've always been able to burn to both, even with my very old, very slow dvd burner... I remember early on one was more common than another, but I can't even remember which it was anymore?