Standards of modern drives over time are developing more and more, as well as the demands of modern users. Thus, today a number of different drives with different capacities are used: Blue-ray, HD-DVD, DVD and others. Of such a variety, it is quite difficult for an ordinary user to choose, especially if he does not understand the current standards at all.
If the sphere of disk media had not evolved over time, such devices have simply become obsolete, and this is not at all surprising. One can hardly imagine that people today have acquired some kind of CD-ROM drive with a maximum capacity of 700 MB, when even for the cheapest flash drive, the volume of less than 4 GB is already incredibly low. At the same time, in terms of size and ease of use, the disks are clearly much inferior to modern flash drives.
However, thanks to constant developments in this area, today we have an extremely high Blue-ray capacity, which at the cost of such disks in many cases makes their use much more relevant compared to other similar devices. To date, the capacity of such discs is the largest among all existing formats of optical media, but many do not even know what these media are and whether to use them instead of standard DVDs.
DVD
DVD-ROM received a much larger increase in volume compared to the then traditional CD format due to the fact that it reduced the laser wavelength. A ray having such a wavelength belongs to the red spectral range, and therefore it is often possible to find such a formulation that a red laser is used in DVD technology. The maximum possible capacity of one layer of such a drive can reach 4.7 GB.
HD DVD
Leading experts from NEC and Toshiba worked hard to develop this format. If we talk about the advantages of this disc format, it is worth noting that they use a standard protective layer, identical to that which covers standard DVDs. Due to this, such devices have almost the same optical system with standard DVD-drives with a small upgrade, providing much wider possibilities for using these devices. The maximum possible capacity reaches 15 GB, which is slightly lower than the capacity of Blue-ray, but at the same time also makes such devices the best choice in some situations, because their cost is slightly less. But in practice, no one uses them.
Blu ray
Initially, this format, like its competitor HD-DVD, which had long since gone into oblivion, was created in order to record high-resolution video that has enhanced algorithms for protecting against unauthorized copying. It is quite obvious that more capacious versions of such carriers will be actively used for distribution of various films and other media files with a large volume. It is worth noting that 3D films, even today, occupy about 50 GB or more, and therefore even the maximum capacity of Blue-ray may be insufficient.
Features and capacity
The creation of this format is the result of the work of the company, which is an association of the largest modern manufacturers that manufacture various drives, including Hitachi, Sony, Samsung and a number of other manufacturers. It is worth noting that in 2004, companies such as Dell and HP also confirmed that they are opening support for this format for their devices.
The laser wave in this case is much shorter than a standard DVD and at the same time corresponds to a blue spectral color. Actually, it was this circumstance that became the fundamental factor of why the media format was named in this way. By reducing this parameter, the recording track in this technology has become half as much, providing a noticeable increase in data density, as well as a noticeable increase in the capacity of the Blue-ray carrier.
Special attention should be paid to the fact that such media have a data transfer rate of 36 Mb / s. The information capacity of Blue-ray is 27 GB, while it is worth noting that the dual-layer drive will have a capacity of 54 GB at all. That is why such discs are in such great demand today, because you can record absolutely everything on them, from some kind of documentation to the most voluminous computer games.
BDXL - Blu-ray 2.0
It is worth noting that BRDF recently released a completely new disc format, which became known as BDXL and IH-BH. The information capacity of Blue-ray is now 128 GB in the extreme modification, however, such devices also have certain problems: this is their cost, as well as backward compatibility. In this regard, they are not today as popular as previous formats.
The format was first announced in 2010, and even then struck by how much capacity the Blue-ray-disk managed to achieve. Indeed, such a volume allows you to record any amount of information regardless of what the user is going to store. Of course, it is hardly possible to use such a device as a portable HDD, but otherwise its characteristics are more than impressive. It is worth noting that in this case the capacity of the Blue-ray disc is the same as that of 27 standard DVD discs, which cannot but impress.
IH-BD
Special attention should be paid to the IH-BD format, since it is hybrid, and therefore much more versatile in comparison with analogues. In other words, one layer in this case provides only one-time recording, while the second provides for the possibility of multiple rewriting an infinite number of times. The result was a drive on which the content was pre-recorded and which later could also be supplemented with information. The maximum capacity of Blue-ray in this case is exactly the same as in the previous case. The optimal use of such drives will be for various encyclopedias or legal databases.
Oddly enough, but, despite the fact that the maximum information capacity of the Blue-ray hybrid type is provided, to date they remain far from being as popular as they could be.
Mini hard drive or not?
Of course, the information capacity of Blue-ray allows the use of such drives even instead of portable hard drives, although their cost is extremely high. For many, this capacity will not be enough, but in fact it is enough to record almost any necessary files. Moreover, given that no moving parts are used in the disks, storing information on them is much safer.