I’ve got a Samsung DVD-CD-RW drive in my Barebones Icecube. Now, I don’t need to re-write CD’s; most of what I burn are images for archiving. I’m using Nero 5 for that.
Since it seems CD-R’s are more common than CD-RW’s, and available in packs of 100 (I can only find 25 packs of RW’s) I was wondering if someone could tell me (before I shell out the five or ten bucks for a couple for testing) if CD-R’s are recordable on my drive.
In short, yes. Your drive is meant to read CDs and DVDs and write CD-Rs and CD-RWs. CD-RWs are useful if you want to be able to use the same CD more than once. CD-R’s are good if you don’t want what’s on the CD to be overwritten, or if you don’t care.
Just the answer I was hoping for, and what should be the obvious one, though I didn’t want to buy a 100 CD hatbox just to wind up with coasters and frisbees…
And like I said, I only want to write once - I’m archiving images and would prefer a media that’s non-erasable.
Thanks.
And CDs don’t make good coasters either… water goes through that hole in the middle. 
Seriously now, CD-Rs should be the way to go. Personaly I don’t trust CD-RWs for long term storage. In my experience some of them become unreadable after a year or so.