This particular drive uses a DVD+RW format which was designed by the DVD+RW Alliance to be used to store both video and data for PC and home entertainment applications. The DVD+RW format is backwards compatible which means it can be read by most DVD-ROM drives. The differences between DVD+R and DVD-R drives are not very many however there are some features which are native to DVD+RW only. One such feature of the DVD+RW format is Mount Rainier (DVD+MRW) drag-and-drop file access support planned for Windows Longhorn. This feature is not available with this drive however it will become more widely available over time.