B. Read the text again and make notes about the features of CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs.

A.Read the text on page 53 and find the following.

Optical discs and drives

D. Listen again and decide whether these sentences are true or false. Correct the false ones.

C. Paul wants to buy some blank discs. Listen to his conversation with the sales assistant and check your answers to A.

A. In pairs, discuss these questions

CDs and DVDs

UNIT 10 OPTICAL STORAGE

A friend has sent you an email explaining that she has just lost all of the information on her PC because of a head crash. Write a reply explaining the following.

Explaining hard drive precautions

Word building

Look at the words in the boxes. Are they nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs? Write n, v, adj or adv next to each word and then complete the sentences below.

1 ____ is the science of magnetic phenomena and properties.

2 Floppy disks and hard drives are ____ storage devices.

3 Data is recorded on a disk in the form of ____ spots called bits.

4 After you create, delete and modify a lot of files, the hard drive becomes ____,with bits and pieces spread all over the disk.

5 ____ slows down the speed at which data is accessed because the disk drive has to work harder to find the parts of a file stored in many different locations.

7 To recognize your hard drive, you can use a disk optimizer or ____ ; this will recorder your files into continuous clusters.

· Why the crash happened

· What precautions she should take with her new PC to avoid similar problems in the future

· What steps she could take to back up her files

1. What do CD and DVD stand for?

2. What is the main advantage of using DVDs instead of CDs?

B. How do you say these expressions in your language?

1. optical disc

2. laser beam

3. backward-compatible

1. A DVD is an optical disc that can be used for video, audio and data storage.

2. The dimensions of a CD and DVD are the same: 1.3 mm thick and 13 cm in diameter.

3. The data on a DVD is read with a laser beam.

4. A basic DVD can hold 3.7 gigabytes.

5. You need a hard drive to read DVDs.

6. DVD-Video discs can hold full-length movies.

7. A DVD Writer is not compatible with old CD-ROMs.

A DVD drive with disc

1. The advantages and disadvantages of optical discs over magnetic disks

2. The storage capacity of a double-sided, dual layer DVD

3. The difference between a DVD burner and a DVD recorder

4. The feature of a portable DVD player which allows the user to play different formats

5. Two possible successors to DVDs

6. Where the Blu-ray format gets its name from

3 Language work: connectors 2