Though the 3.5-inch floppy disk had been a boon to home users and small businesses that needed data backups, they had relatively low capacity. This problem had been solved with introduction of the next generation in storage media: CD-Recordable (CD-R) and CD-Rewritable (CD-RW) drives. The Compact Disc, first invented in 1979, reached the market in late 1982. In June 1985, the CD-ROM and in 1990 CD-Recordable were introduced to the general market.
In the early 1990’s CD-R were not commonly used for data backups, because of high costs. But later, when CD-ROM drive became a usual device for practically every computer and prices for compact disks tangibly fell, data backup on CD became very popular.