CD-Rom Drive

The Compact Disk Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) drive has gone from pricey luxury to inexpensive necessity on the modern PC. The CD-ROM has opened up new computing vistas that were never possible before, due to its high capacity and broad applicability. In many ways, the CD-ROM has replaced the floppy disk drive, but in many ways it has allowed us to use our computers in ways that we never used them before. In fact, the "multimedia revolution" was largely a result of the availability of cheap CD-ROM drives.
As the name implies, CD-Roms use compact disks, in fact, the same physical disk format as the ones we use for music. Special formatting is used to allow these disks to hold data. As CD-Roms have come down in price they have become almost as common in a new PC as the hard disk or floppy disk, and they are now the method of choice for the distribution of software and data due to their combination of high capacity and cheap and easy manufacturing. Recent advances in technology have also improved their performance to levels approaching those of hard disks in many respects