There is no doubt that the decade of the 80s, 90s and part of the 2000s went on to become the years of the Compact Disc . We used them for practically everything, not only to listen to our favorite music after buying that long-awaited album in the music record store, but to save our vacation photos, or store documents and transport them to different places.
Then, with the advent of convenient USB memory sticks , and after the birth of cloud storage , CDs have been almost relegated to oblivion. Although it is true that there are still many users who continue to use them, just as the music industry continues to resist relegating itself solely to digital music platforms.
If you are still using it, you may already know that it is not possible to format or erase a CD-R , since once we burn it and save data on it, it is not possible to restore and delete it. On the contrary, we need a CD-RW or a DVD-RW (in case we want to use a DVD), which is the ideal option to be able to use it again whenever we need it.
Formatting a CD-RW or DVD-RW in Windows
We must insert the CD-RW or DVD-RW into the computer, using the disc drive designed for this purpose, always with the label facing up. In case our computer does not have one (something very common today with increasingly smaller desktops and laptops), it will be necessary to get an external recorder unit.
Click on the Windows Start menu , which we will find in the lower left corner of the screen, and open the File Explorer . Now we have to click on My Computer , and click on the icon of our disk drive.
Now click on Administrator , and then we will have to click on Format . We now choose a suitable file system (the default option, UDF 2.01 is the most recommended because it is possible to use it in most current operating systems), although you can also choose the UDF 2.60 option in case you are going to play the CD. on some Blu-Ray reader.
We click on Start and OK . Once we have done this, the system will begin to format our CD or DVD according to the file system we have chosen.
Formatting a CD-RW or DVD-RW on Mac
If you use macOS, the process is similar to the one we follow with Windows. First, we must insert the CD-RW or DVD-RW into the internal or external drive of our Mac. We open Finder and click on Go to bring up a drop-down menu where we must then select the Utilities button.
We double-click on Disk Utility , select the disk, click on the Erase tab and then we will have two options to choose from: Quickly , which will erase the disk faster (but the errors that appear would not be resolved), or Completely (which will take a little more, but in most cases it is much more effective).
Finally we click on Delete , and we will have to wait a few minutes until the disk formatting is completed.
