Apparantly, one can buy either "CD-R" discs or "CD+R" discs.

How do I tell if my CD writer on my laptop writes to discs that are labelled "CD-R" or "CD+R"?

I don't have the manual and my exterior of my drive does not say. When I right-click to properties menu on the drive it just shows "TOSHIBA CD-R/RW SR-C8002" But I can not tell if the "-" is just a separator dash or if it mean that it is a "CD-R" drive.

I think you're confusing DVD's and CD's. Only CD-R discs exsist, while both DVD+R and DVD-R discs exist. Besides, most DVD drives read both formats anyway, so that's not a big problems. Only really old drives support only one format.

What Orodreth said. DVDs have that formatting, not CDs. The difference between the two only matters with certain DVD players and recorders (mostly really old ones).

I see. Thanks.