CD-R is short for Compact Disk-Recordable. CD-RW is an acronym for Compact Disk Recordable reWriteable. 1 - CD-RW drives are backward compatible with CD-R, meaning they will burn regular CD-R media in addition to CD-RW media. 2 - CD-RW media can be read in the CD-RW mechanism or any CD-ROM drive that supports Multiread
capability. This is basically the current crop of 20x, 24x and higher speed CD-ROM's. 3 - CD-RW media can be erased and rewritten up to 1000 times, and support all standard CD formats, just like CD-R. The bottom line is for just a few dollars more than a regular CD-R you can add the ability to use CD-RW media when needed - like two drives in one.