Storing Your CDs

There are many different storage alternatives for your CD collection. The factors for storage include how many CDs you own and how long you plan to keep them.

Below, you will find several alternatives for storing your CDs:

1. CD jewel cases

You have probably owned these before, as they are the most common. They can hold your CD cover art and are very easy to line up on a shelf. Keep in mind that they do break rather easily and they take up quite a bit of space.

2. Plastic CD sleeves

Plastic sleeves are cheap and thin, so they are easy to afford and easy on shelf space. Since they
are so thin, they obviously don't offer a lot in terms of protection. For long term storage, they
generally aren't recommended.

3. Paper sleeves

For short term storage needs, paper is very cheap and doesn't use much space. Simliar to plastic
sleeves, paper is thin and doesn't offer very much protection.

4. Paperboard sleeves

Paperboard sleeves are much thicker than paper so they will protect your discs. They are also
inexpensive, although they can be hard to seal.

5. Tyvek CD sleeves

Tyvek sleeves are cheap and they don't take up a lot of space. For long term storage, Tyvek is
normally recommended.

6. CD-ROM disc cases

These types of cases can hold a lot of CDs in a small space and they may even help to keep out
dust. They do however, make reading labels a bit hard, they keep CDs out of site, and they will
take up a lot of space.

7. CD spindles

Spindles are cheap and they hold several hundred CDs in a small stack. Sorting through them is
hard if you need one specific disk, which makes it something that isn't normally recommended.

Essentials Of CDR

The simple rule of thumb is that whatever you have stored as a file on any other storage medium can also be stored as a file on a CD-ROM. To the recorder, a file is a file, and an ISO doesn't care whether or not the file contains pictures, text,
or even audio sound.

There are a few special cases, as to where you would want to record a file to a CD in a special type of format. The most obvious here is CD-DA audio. If you wanted to record an audio file to a CD so that you could play it back on your home stereo, you would need to write a CD-DA (or Digital Audio) disk.

When you copy data to a CD, you need to ensure that your data doesn't exceed the capacity of the CD that you will be recording to. Due to the audio requirements of CDs, the amount of information a CD can hold is measured in minutes/seconds/sectors.
Each second can contain 75 sectors, each of which are capable of holding 2,048 bytes of Mode 1 user data.

By using the CD Size command in the edit menu, you can set the capacity of the set you wish to produce, which will help you to prevent exceeding it. The status bar will show you how much space you have used, how much remains free, and the percentage of each one.

Even though this may sound a bit confusing at first, keep in mind that it may take some time if you are new to computers. Even though copying a CD is quite easy, knowing the limits and how things work is a bit more complex. Give it some time,
and you'll be copying files to CD like the pros do it.