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
History of optical storage media History of optical storage media Although research into optical data storage has been ongoing for many decades, the first popular system was the Compact Disc, introduced in 1982, adapted from audio (CD-DA) to data storage (the CD-ROM format) with the 1985 "Yellow Book", and re-adapted as the first mass market optical storage medium with CD-R and CD-RW in 1988. Compact Disc is still the "de facto" standard for audio recordings, although its place for other multimedia recordings and optical data storage has largely been superseded by DVD. DVD (initially an initialism abbreviation of "Digital Video Disc," then modified to "Digital