CD ROM

CD-ROM (pronounced /ˌsiːˌdiːˈrɒm/, an acronym of "compact disc read-only memory") is a pre-pressedcompact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback, the 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed bySony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form ofbinary data.^[1]

CD-ROMs are popularly used to distribute computersoftware, including games and multimedia applications, though any data can be stored (up to the capacity limit of a disc). Some CDs hold both computer data and audio with the latter capable of being played on a CD player, while data (such as software or digital video) is only usable on a computer (such as ISO 9660 format PC CD-ROMs). These are called enhanced CDs.

Although many people use lowercase letters in this acronym, proper presentation is in all capital letters with a hyphen between CD and ROM. It was also suggested by some, especially soon after the technology was first released, that CD-ROM was an acronym for "Compact Disc read-only-media", or that it was a more "correct" definition. This was not the intention of the original team who developed the CD-ROM, and common acceptance of the "memory" definition is now almost universal. This is probably in no small part due to the widespread use of other "ROM" acronyms such as Flash-ROMs and EEPROMs where "memory" is usually the correct term.

At the time of the technology's introduction it had far more capacity than computer hard drives common at the time, although the reverse is now true though some experimental descendants of it such asHolographic versatile disc may not have more space than today's biggest hard drive.