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A standard CD-R has a storage capacity of 80 minutes of audio or 700 MiB of data. Non-standard CD-Rs are available with capacities of 79 minutes and 59.74 seconds/736,966,656 bytes (702 MiB), which they achieve by slightly exceeding the tolerances specified in the Orange Book CD standards. Most CD-Rs on the market are of the latter capacity. There are also 90 minute/790 MiB and 99 minute/870 MiB discs, though they are rare.

The polycarbonate disc contains a spiral groove to guide the laser beam upon writing and reading information. The disc is coated on the side with the spiral groove with a very thin layer of organic dye and subsequently with a thin, reflecting layer of silver, a silver alloy or gold. Finally, a protective coating of a photo-polymerizable lacquer is applied on top of the metal reflector and cured with UV-irradiation.

A CD recorder is a special type of CD-ROM drive used to write onto blank CD-R media. A laser is used to "burn" small pits into the dye so that the disc can later be read by the laser in a CD-ROM drive or CD player. The laser used to write CD-Rs is an infrared laser which emits laser radiation at a wavelength of 780 nm. The reflectivity in the pit area is different (lower) than for the unchanged dye area, because the refractive index of the dye is lowered upon "burning" a pit. Upon reading back the stored information, the laser operates at a low enough power not to "burn" the dye and an optical pick-up records the changes in the intensity of the reflected laser radiation when scanning along the groove and over the pits. The change of the intensity of the reflected laser radiation is transformed into an electrical signal, from which the digital information is recovered ("decoded"). The decomposition of the dye in the pit area through the heat of the laser is irreversible (permanent). Therefore, once a section of a CD-R is written, it cannot be erased or rewritten, unlike a CD-RW. A CD-R can be recorded in multiple sessions.

When looked at by the naked eye, the part of the CD-R which contains data will be slightly darker than areas which are not written to. Using this method, you can get a rough estimation of the amount of data on a CD-R, and whether or not it has been written to.

1 History
2 Physical characteristics
3 Burning methods
4 Optimal storage, expected lifespan
5 Readability in CD-ROM drives

History
The CD-R, originally named CD write-once (WO), specification was first published in 1988 by Philips and Sony in the 'Orange Book'. The Orange Book consists of several parts, furnishing details of the CD-WO, CD-MO (magneto-optic), and CD-RW (rewritable). The latest editions have abandoned the use of the term "CD-WO" in favor of "CD-R". Written CD-Rs and CD-RWs are fully compatible with the Audio CD (Red Book) and CD-ROM (Yellow Book) standards. They use Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation, EFM, CIRC error correction plus the third error correction layer defined for CD-ROM. The first CD-Rs were produced in 1994.Compatibility of CD-R and conventional read-only discs, CD and CD-ROM, is a miraculous achievement which was made possible by the dye materials developed by Taiyo Yuden.

Physical characteristics
A blank CD-R is not "empty"; it has a groove with a wobble, which is used for timing and adjustment of the disc rotation frequency during writing. Also, the disc contains a ATIP which is a data track contaning information about the media (length etc.). Among the first manufacturers were the companies Taiyo Yuden, Kodak, Maxell, and TDK. Since then, the CD-R was further improved to allow writing speeds as fast as 52x (as of 2004) relative to the first 1x CD-Rs. The improvements were mainly due to optimisation of special dye compositions for CD-R, groove geometry, and the dye coating process. Low-speed burning at 1x is still used for special "audio CD-Rs", since CD-R audio recorders were standardized to this recording speed.

There are three basic formulations of dye used in CD-Rs:

Cyanine dyes were the earliest ones developed, and their formulation is patented by Taiyo Yuden. Cyanine dyes are mostly green or light blue in color, and are chemically unstable. This makes cyanine discs unsuitable for archival use; they can fade and become unreadable in a few years. Many manufacturers use proprietary chemical additives to make more stable cyanine discs.
Azo dye CD-Rs are dark blue in color, and their formulation is patented by Mitsubishi Chemicals. Unlike cyanine, azo dyes are chemically stable, and typically rated with a lifetime of decades. Phthalocyanine dye CD-Rs are usually silver, gold or light green. The patents on pthalocyanine CD-Rs are held by Mitsui and Ciba Specialty Chemicals. These are also chemically stable, and often given a rated lifetime of hundreds of years. Although the CD-R was initially developed in Japan, most of the production of CD-R had moved to Taiwan by 1998. Taiwanese manufacturers supplied more than 70% of the worldwide production volume of 10.5 billion CD-Rs in 2003.

Unfortunately, many manufacturers add additional coloring to disguise their cyanine CD-Rs, so you cannot determine the formulation of a disc based purely on its color. Similarly, a gold reflective layer does not guarantee use of phthalocyanine dye.

Burning methods
Each CD recorder can burn a CD-R by several methods, including Disc At Once, Session At Once, or Track at Once burning. The difference between them is that Disc At Once recording is when all of the data is joined in one circle whilst the writing laser is never turned off during the process. With Session At Once, the laser is turned off between sessions (allowing them to be added at a later date, provided the disc isn't closed). Track At Once recording is when each track is separated from each other, leaving a 2-second space until the next track is read. When a track has finished, most CD players will automatically countdown, for example, to leave 2 seconds of space between tracks, it will countdown from -0:02 and when finished the new track will start. The laser turns off between each space, and it's just like the way a vinyl record has its tracks structured.

Optimal storage, expected lifespan
Note also that rated CD-R lifetimes are estimates based on accelerated aging tests, and lifetime can vary considerably based on how you store the discs. For optimum lifespan, CD-Rs should be stored vertically to prevent warping, inside archival plastic cases which use a ridged ring around the spindle which grips the disc. This ridge prevents the surface of the disc from coming into contact with anything during storage. Discs should be stored in cool, dark conditions, with controlled humidity. Avoid using any kind of label on the CD surface, and avoid use of printed inserts using anything other than water-based inks.

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