Your PD drive is like two drives in one. It works as both a CD-ROM drive and a high capacity rewritable optical disk drive. Using its laser read/write head, your drive can read conventional CDs and read and write data to PD disks.

PD - read and write
In the recording layer of a PD disk, your PD drive uses its laser at high power to heat a small area of the surface, changing its reflectivity from high (bright) to low (dark), or back again to erase. To read the information written on the disk, the drive uses its laser at low power to sense the patterns of brightness and darkness, translating these into data for your computer.

CD - Read Only
The information on a compact disk (CD) is in the form of microscopic pits molded into its surface, below a protective layer. To read the data, your PD drive uses its laser at low power, sensing the length of the pits and translating that into data for the computer.

3M PD650 Rewritable Optical Disks

Project Specifications:
Disk Format
User Area:	25-57.64mm
Track Configuration:	Spiral
Track Pitch:	1.2µm
Direction of Rotation:	Counterclockwise
Mechanical
Disk Diameter (outside):	120mm
Center Hole Diameter:	15mm
Cartridge Dimension (w/l/h):	124mm/135mm/7.8mm
Disk Weight (without cartridge):	<20g
Radial Runout:	<70µm
Axial Runout:	<350µm
Tilt:	<7mrad
Optical
Substrate Thickness:	1.2mm
Refractive Index:	1.58
Read/Write/Erase
Maximum Read Power:	1.5mW
Carrier-to-noise Ratio
(3T recording):	>46dB
Cross-talk:	<-23dB
Raw Byte Error Rate:	<5x10-5
Capacity
650 MB (512 B/S)
Reliability
Lifetime (based on accelerated testing):	>15 years
Temperature and Humidity Requirements
Temperature (operating):	5 degrees - 60 degrees C
Temperature (storage):	-10 degrees - 60 degrees C
Humidity (operating):	10-80% RH
Humidity (storage):	8-80% RH

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