Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 20th Edition

Chapter 11. Optical Storage

Optical Technology

There are basically two types of disk storage for computers: magnetic and optical. In magnetic storage, data is recorded magnetically on rotating disks. Optical disc storage is similar to magnetic disk storage in basic operation, but it reads and writes using light (optically) instead of magnetism. Although most magnetic disk storage is fully read and write capable many times over, many optical storage media are either read-only or write-once. Note the convention in which we refer to magnetic as disk and optical as disc. This is not a law or rule but is followed by most in the industry.

At one time, it was thought that optical storage would replace magnetic as the primary online storage medium. However, ...