Optical disc drive operations, and the last speed for read-only (ROM) operations. For example, a 40×/16×/48× CD writer drive is capable of writing to CD-R media at speed of 40× (6,000 KB/s), writing to CD-RW media at speed of 16× (2,400 KB/s), and reading from a CD-ROM media at speed of 48× (7,200 KB/s). During the times of combo (CD-RW/DVD-ROM) drives, an additional speed rating (e.g. the 16× in 52×/32×/52×/16×) is designated for DVD-ROM media reading operations. For DVD writer drives, Blu-ray disc combo drives, and Blu-ray disc writer drives, the writing and reading speed of their respective optical media are specified in
Optical disc authoring require writing the entire disc at once, but allow writing of different parts at different times. This allows a user to construct a disc incrementally, as it could be on a rewritable medium like a floppy disk or rewritable CD. However, if the disc is non-rewritable, a given bit can be written only once. Due to this limitation, a non-rewritable disc whose burn failed for any reason cannot be repaired. (Such a disc is colloquially termed a "coaster", a reference to a beverage coaster.) There are many optical disc authoring technologies for optimizing the authoring process and preventing errors. Some