It has a capacity of 650 MB on one side, and the size of the disc is 12 cm in diameter (5 inches) similar to a general CD or DVD, and it is used in a state where it is housed in a square cartridge.

Also, due to the characteristics contained in the cartridge, it does not touch the recording surface directly, so it is resistant to dust and scratches and is relatively reliable.

existed as re-writable media close to the feeling of handling floppy disks, but the advantage that the PD drive can be read by the CD-ROM was merit compared with those.

In such an environment, a PD capable of serving as both a CD-ROM drive and a large capacity (then) auxiliary storage device was advantageous both in terms of cost and installation.

However, in the summer of 2000, compatibility with PD was not taken into consideration when creating DVD-RAM version 2.0, which has the same with 4.7 GB standard capacity as other DVDs.