CD-R

CD-R stands for Compact Disk-Recordable, and is a type of disk drive that can create CD-ROMs and Audio CDs. This allows users to "master" a CD-ROM or Audio CD for publishing.
A feature of many CD-R drives, called Multisession Recording, enables you to keep adding data to a CD-ROM over time. This is extremely important if you want to use the CD-R drive to create backup CD-ROMs.
To create CD-ROMs and Audio CDs, you'll need not only a CD-R drive, but also a CD-R software package. Often, it is the software package, not the drive itself, that determines how easy or difficult it is to create CD-ROMs.
CD-R drives can also read CD-ROMs and play Audio CDs.