# Can I burn a CD-R in a CD-RW Drive?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-burn-a-cd-r-in-a-cd-rw-drive/232050>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 2, 2004, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-burn-a-cd-r-in-a-cd-rw-drive/232050 "2004-03-02T04:50:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![postcards](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8e8cbc/32.png) [@postcards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/postcards)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-burn-a-cd-r-in-a-cd-rw-drive/232050/1 "2004-03-02T04:50:48Z")

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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.

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**Author:** ![elfbabe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b782af/32.png) [@elfbabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfbabe)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-burn-a-cd-r-in-a-cd-rw-drive/232050/2 "2004-03-02T04:54:36Z")

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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.

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**Author:** ![postcards](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8e8cbc/32.png) [@postcards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/postcards)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-burn-a-cd-r-in-a-cd-rw-drive/232050/3 "2004-03-02T05:04:12Z")

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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.

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**Author:** ![Dog80](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@Dog80](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dog80)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-burn-a-cd-r-in-a-cd-rw-drive/232050/4 "2004-03-02T07:56:54Z")

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> [@](#):
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> I didn’t want to buy a 100 CD hatbox just to wind up with coasters and frisbees…

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.