What is a CD ?

Metal layer (usually aluminum) reflects light from a tiny laser beam into a light sensitive receiver To record data, a laser is used to burn specific pattern into the surface The surface of the reflective layer alternate between lands and pits. Lands are flat areas (0s); pits are tiny bumps on the reflective layer (1s) Spiral track up to 3 miles
120 mm

CD Characteristics
The most important advantage of a CD is over magnetic storage media is that 1.66 data bits / m can be stored resulting in a storage density of 1,000,000 bits / mm2.
i.e. 16000 tracks/inch as compared to the floppy disks 96 tracks/inch.

Another advantage is that magnetization can decrease over time while optical storage is not subject to such effects.

Comparison

DVD is a digital optical disc storage format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than compact discs while having the same dimensions.

The DVD specifications created and updated by the DVD Forum are published as so-called DVD Books (e.g. DVD-ROM Book, DVD-Audio Book, DVDVideo Book, DVD-R Book, DVD-RW Book, DVDRAM Book, DVD-AR Book, DVD-VR Book, etc.).[1][2][3] Some specifications for mechanical, physical and optical characteristics of DVD optical discs can be downloaded as freely available standards from the ISO website.[11] There are also equivalent Ecma standards for some of these specifications, such as Ecma-267 for DVD-ROMs.[12] Also, the DVD+RW Alliance publishes competing recordable DVD specifications such as DVD+R, DVD+R DL, DVD+RW or DVD+RW DL. These DVD formats are also ISO standards.[13][14][15][16]