I am hoping to gather insights into how a computer physically stores the data onto a cd. What form does this data take? Is it burnt onto the cd? Is it visible or invisible to the naked eye? What does the 'reading' or 'playback' device actually 'see' or 'read'? Thank you for the sensible answer.
2006-11-12 05:23:08 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
A disc is made up of three layers, the top which you see and can write on, the middle layer which is where the data is written on a different material, and the lower layer which protects the middle layer from being destroyed. A cd burner takes the binary form of the file you are putting on the cd, 1s and 0s, and burns holes into that middle layer. To put that many rows into the middle layer is too small to be seen by the naked eye, all we see is a discolored ring starting in the middle and going out toward the edge after it is burned. When you put the disc back into the drive that laser goes over the holes in the middle layer and interprets them into the 1s and 0s. That is called "reading" the disc. We call it "burning" a disc because the laser is burning holes into the middle layer of the disc that will be read back when you put the disc back into the drive. That information that it reads is sent to your computer and it plays the file in whatever media or file type it was. The disc itself only stores ones and zeros, your computer interprets the rest. Hope this helps explain it to you.
2006-11-12 05:29:44 · answer #1 · answered by Tech 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Wikipedia provides answer to many such easy things. See the link below and reserach there. I am not going to type that much here.
Howstuffworks is also good.
2006-11-12 05:30:56 · answer #2 · answered by golgolbaat 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is etched into the disc by means of a laser beam.
2006-11-13 01:07:23 · answer #3 · answered by livs2fly 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋