The CD-Recordable FAQ page at www.cdrfaq.org has extensive information about just about anything related to recordable and rewritable compact discs.

A CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) is a rewritable optical disc.

To achieve full speed, it's also necessary to use TDK's high-speed discs, which run about $4.99 each, more than twice the price of most generic rewritable discs.

For rewritable discs, however, this doesn't necessarily occur; there exists technology that allows them to be used as fully rewritable storage media (see UDF).

The $599 100i is the first in a new breed of drives that write to DVD+RW's, rewritable discs that cost about $15.

It is used in some rewritable (able to be erased and written again) optical discs.

Writing data onto rewritable discs, those that can be erased and reused, is considerably slower.

For write-once media, the entire disk is virtualized, making the write-once nature transparent for the user; the disk can be treated the same way one would treat a rewritable disc.

Its planned launch is in the 2009-10 time frame for ROM and 2010-13 for rewritable discs.

Developed in 1996, DVD-RAM is a rewritable optical disc usually encased in a cartridge.