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the polycarbonate substrate for the recording laser
beam to follow when writing data onto the disc.
Pre-Master The may be a tape, hard disk drive, CD-R
or CD-RW disc that contains data in the Compact Disc
format. The data on a pre-master is recorded onto a
master from which Compact Discs are then mass rep-
licated.
Power Calibration Area (PCA) An area of a CD-R or
CD-RW disc that is reserved for the CD recorder to
calibrate the laser power for recording the disc.
Program Memory Area (PMA) An area on a CD-R
or CD-RW disc where the information about the tracks
and sessions on the disc as stored as a temporary Table
of Contents (TOC). When the disc (or session) is final-
ized and closed, the information stored in the PMA be-
comes the TOC.
Random Access When data on a storage medium can
be accessed randomly instead of sequentially. A close
analogy would be in music - a cassette tape offers se-
quential access because you have to wind through the
tape to reach a certain part, yet a phonograph record
would be random access because you could place the
needle anywhere on its surface. CD-R and CD-RW,
like hard disk drives and optical drives are random ac-
cess devices.
Random Mode UDF Ability for CD-RW, DVD-
RAM, or DVD+RW to randomly write, erase, and re-
write any random sector on the disc. In earlier “se-
quential” recording modes, sectors could only be re-
corded in a track in ascending order, so that any one
file or folder could not be deleted. The user could “vir-
tually” delete the file/folder, but it would physically re-
main on the disc until the whole disc was erased.
Random mode allow a file/folder to be deleted and the
free space it creates can be used immediately
List of Supported CD Recorders
Supported Recorders
