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The compact disk has been a popular format for music and data collection for many years. The format was developed in 1985 by Sony and Phillips, and has remained little changed since then. When compact disks were first introduced, they were solely for the sale of music albums. The medium eventually caused vinyl records and cassette tapes to go obsolete. The compact disk was the introduction to digital music as we know it today. In the mid-1990s, recordable compact disks were introduced. These disks allow users to record music or other data to the disk for transfer or storage.

Compact disks are thin plastic circles with layers on one side. When the disk is written, bumps and ridges are created that represent digital binary data. A compact disc player or drive is used to read the data. The player or drive uses a laser mounted on an electromechanical slide to move back and forth over the disk. The disk is spun at a high speed; the laser detects the high and low points from the bumps and ridges and sends data to the processor. The processor interprets the laser reflection as data, translating the information into either music or data files, depending on what is housed on the compact disk. Compact disks are very cheap to manufacture, and can now be cheaply written to on any home computer using a recordable compact disk drive.

Because the compact disk player or drive is mechanical, it will occasionally break. CD-ROM drives (the compact disk reader for a computer) are usually not repairable. The components are housed in a box that is difficult to open and near impossible to troubleshoot. The drives are relatively cheap, making the labor costs from a repair center too expensive for the unit. They are usually thrown away and replaced. Compact disk players, which are used to play music and can be found in most people’s entertainment centers, are a different story. These systems usually have many features for sound manipulation, reading/housing multiple disks, and connecting to other stereo components. These systems have come down in price as the technology has matured, but still cost a fair amount. These players are much easier to repair, since the internal components can be accessed by removing the cover of the unit. With the sale price being higher, having a fault unit repaired makes much more sense. Most of the faults found in these systems have to do with dirty or fault lasers, damaged motors, or misaligned gears. These can be repaired rather quickly by a qualified technician.

The compact disk has been around for a long time (an eternity in the computer world), and does not appear to be going anywhere any time soon. Compact disks are still a cheap way to securely store important data and can be used on most computers since CD-ROM drives usually come standard. Digital music players are starting to eat into the compact disk player market, but there are no plans yet to stop selling albums on compact disk.