Discover the best type of CD for storage

Q I have been using Tevion Pure Silver CD discs for recording, deleting and re-recording. When I delete I expect to regain storage space on the discs. I seem to lose the space I used and this is not re-usable. Is there a fault with the discs?

Roy Athill

A Whether or not you get space back after deleting files on a writable CD depends firstly on the type of disc. CD-R discs can only be written to once. After data has been saved to a portion of the disc it is fixed and cannot be removed.

It can sometimes appear to have been deleted because the discs are made in such a way that the list of files on them can be updated. This is normally to add more files but the reference to them can also be removed. As the space on the disc cannot be used again, the capacity is not available for more files.

CD-RW discs can be used many times and so any missing space may be down to the software being used to write the files to the disc. Formatting the disc should make the space available again, although this will wipe all of the other files on it. You should use CD-RW discs If you want to keep changing the disc contents.

Alternatively, USB memory keys have higher capacities and act just like a hard disk with space freed as soon as a file is deleted.

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