1. Optical Discs
Hard drives are devices with platters that
can be read and written to using magnetic fields generated at the tips
of moving drive heads. They are great for applications where data is
meant to be written and rewritten many times at a single location. For
applications where you intend to write the data less frequently or
perhaps permanently, optical discs are used. CDs and DVDs are made of
photosensitive materials embedded in plastic, and they can be modified
by focused light, usually in the form of a laser beam. Laptops, desktop
computers, and some tablets come with an optical drive.
A CD-ROM disc can contain up to about 800 MB
of information. For this reason, CDs are most commonly used for audio
and picture files, often bundled into albums. DVDs can support from 4.7
GB for a single layer to up to 8.5 GB for double-layer discs, making
them useful for applications, games, and movies. Blu-ray discs can
contain about 40 GB of information and are used for high-definition
movies.
The suffix ROM (read-only memory) is used for
a disc that is permanently written and can only be read; R is used when
the disc is read-only once you have written to it once; and RW is used
when you can read and write to the disc. A plus (+) or minus (-) sign
indicates the technology that is used to work with that kind of disc;
for example, DVD+RW and DVD-RW are two different formats. Modern
optical drives can read and write to a variety of, but not all,
formats, so you need to make sure that a particular format will work in
your drive.
The Mastered format is a write-once format.
When you add files and master the disc, you “burn” the files and the
disc becomes read-only. With the Live File System, you can continue to
write to the disc over time. If the disc is an R disc, then the files
are added until you fill up the disc. For RW, you can overwrite deleted
files and use the disk again.
The latest and highest-capacity optical
drives are Blu-ray discs. They are often used for very high-quality
movie playback, and less frequently to back up data on. A single-layer
Blu-ray disc can hold 25 GB; a double-layer disc can hold 50 GB. The
name Blu-ray comes from the use of a blue-violet laser in place of the
red lasers used in the DVD format. Advanced PCs may come with this type
of optical drive. Blu-ray technology requires its own set of drivers,
but it is managed similarly to other optical disc types.
To format a CD or DVD
1. Insert the blank disc into your drive.
2. The Burn A Disc dialog box opens. Enter a title for the disc.
When you insert a writable optical disc, Windows 8 offers you two formatting options.
3. Select either the Like A USB Flash Drive radio button or the With A CD/DVD Player radio button, and tap or click Next.
4. When the format operation is complete, open the disc window and drag and drop the files you want to copy to the disc.
To play a file on an optical disc
Double-click the file. Windows will launch the software player that is associated with that file type.
Windows 8 has an AutoPlay feature that will
detect the files on an optical disc and play them automatically when
you insert them. Audio and video files require the use of a conversion
program called a codec. Although a variety of audio and video codecs
are included in Windows 8, Microsoft for some reason has decided to
once again omit the movie playback codec. You will need to either
purchase or download a movie playback program. When you purchase a DVD
drive, this software is often included in the package. You can download
the Media Player Codec Pack from CNET’s Download.com site.
Tip
You can find a more complete listing of disc types at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Which-CD-or-DVD-format-should-I-use.
2. USB Flash Drives
A flash drive, or thumbdrive, is a set of
memory chips packaged into a container with a bus controller. Nearly
all thumbdrives are USB drives, and over time the capacity of these
drives has grown substantially while the price has plummeted. Small USB
drives are given away as prizes in cereal boxes.
Modern flash drives have very long duty
cycles, in keeping with their solid-state construction. Most USB drives
are preformatted. The smaller drives come with the FAT file system,
which is universally supported. Larger USB drives are formatted with
FAT32. You can use and run disk diagnostic utilities on thumbdrives,
and you can partition them.
To format a flash drive
1. Press 
+E. Tap and hold, or right-click, the flash drive icon in Windows Explorer, and select Format from the context menu .
The Format command for a USB drive
2. In the Format dialog box , select the file system you want (FAT, FAT32, NTFS, or exFAT), enter a name for the drive, and click the Start button.
The Format dialog box for a USB drive has options for different file systems.
Most of the options you see in the Format
dialog box are identical to the options you see for hard drives. The
formatting process writes the addressing scheme differently, but it is
functionally equivalent.
Here are some uses for flash drives:
• Create a Windows to Go installation, which is a portable version of Windows on a USB drive . Windows To Go is only available with Windows 8 Enterprise edition.
• Install a lightweight bootable operating system, along with disk utilities, antivirus programs, and portable apps.
• Encrypt the drive to secure your files on it.
• Turn the flash drive into a device key by using Predator software (you can get this from Download.com).
• Use the flash drive with Windows ReadyBoost.
Tip
ReadyBoost is a Windows-specific feature that
allows you to use a USB flash drive as a cache for your system memory.
In laptops, for example, you can speed up your system by extending the
system memory in this manner. Enable ReadyBoost in the ReadyBoost tab
of the Properties dialog box for the USB flash drive.
