If you are not up to date on technology, you may be wondering what a DVD burner is. A DVD burner is a storage device that is optical and it comes standard with almost all computers today and within the past few years. They write to a special optical media that are called DVD-ROMS, and they can actually store as much as 4.7 gigabytes on one single disk.



You can also purchase DVD burners that are stand alone and you can connect them to Digital Video Recorders as well. For the purposes discussed in this article, we will mostly be referring to the DVD burners that are hooked up or already in your computer.

You will find that most DVD burners today are connected to the motherboard of the computer by an E-IDE interface, and in a few cases a Serial ATA cable. 160 Megabits per second is the rate of the data transfer. Earlier connection protocols, including ATAPI and SCSI are no longer fast enough to read and write at the current DVD data rates.

Although DVD burners use to be on the high end of computer hardware, now days they are relatively inexpensive to purchase. Most internal DVD-Rs only cost about $30-50 dollars and you can purchase them online at places such as .

There are a variety of different formats available for DVD burners. The biggest choice that you have to make is whether or not you want a DVD burner that can just burn or one that can actually both read and write, which allows you to add more media to the same disc over a period of time. The burners that can read and write are called either DVD+RW or DVD-RW, and the burners that can only write are called DVD+R. There are a variety of different formats, and they can be a bit confusing as well. They are created by various companies that are competing for business, but currently you can now purchase DVD-RW burners that can use both formats. Now the process is starting all over again in the high definition DVDs - BluRay and HD-DVD.

One of the most important uses that people have for DVD burners is to back up their important files. This type of backup will only work for you if you continually use it. You can make duplicate VD's and keep originals safe as well, which is a great idea if you have kids who can be a bit hard on DVDs.

Over time DVD burners have become a very common and standard piece of hardware for all computers today. No doubt if you purchase a new computer it will come standard with one, and you may even want to put one in your older computer if you feel it is worth it. Some computers may not be able to handle the new technology, so in some cases it may be in your best interest to go ahead and purchase a new computer.