BasicsA digital versatile disc that is rewriteable is commonly referred to as a DVD-RW. DVD-RW is a disc format that allows repeated recording on the disc. Prior to the release of the DVD-RW, DVDs had been read-only video, to be played in DVD players, and multimedia (DVD-ROM), to be played in computers' DVD-ROM drives. Now, any user with a DVD Recorder drive can create their own DVDs from their desktop computers. DVD-RW drives can be write both DVD-R and DVD-RW discs and can read any type of DVD.

How is a DVD-R different from a DVD-RW?DVD-R is a write once, read many format. This means, you can write to the disk only once and the data can not be changed afterwards, A DVD-RW, however, can be written to many times.
DVD-RW discs usually hold 120 minutes (4.7GB) of data, although some can hold up to 4.5 hours (8.75GB) and, according to some reprots can be rewritten as many as 1000 times. It is possible to save data to a DVD-RW in the same way as one can save it to a floppy disk.

Where can I use a DVD-RW?You can use a DVD-RW on any computer in any of the ocmputer labs to read data from, but can only write data to a DVD-RW witha computer that has a DVD Recorder Drive.