CD-R is an abbreviation of compact disc recordable[?]. Operating on the same premise as a CD, a CD-R is thin disc made of polycarbonate[?] with 120mm diameter used to store music or data. However, unlike conventional CD media, a CD-R has dye core instead of a metal core. A laser is used to etch "pits" into the dye so that the disc can later be read by the laser in a CD-ROM drive or CD player. Once used, a CD-R cannot be erased and reused, but it can be recorded in multiple sessions by using UDF format. A CD-RW, though, can be reused.
There was some incompatability with CD-R and older CD-ROM drives. This was primarily due to the lower reflectivity of the CD-R disc. In general, CD drives marked as 8x or greater will usually read CD-R discs.
see also: Blank recordable CDs, DVD
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump