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Optical drives let your computer read and interact with discs like CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays. However, they're quickly becoming outdated.
Optical discs can be reflective, where the light source and detector are on the same side of the disc, or transmissive, where light shines through the disc to be detected on the other side. Optical discs can store analog information (e.g. Laserdisc), digital information (e.g. DVD), or store both on the same disc (e.g. CD Video).
Optical drives for computers come in two main form factors: half-height (also known as desktop drive) and slim type (used in laptop computers and compact desktop computers). They exist as both internal and external variants. Half-height optical drives are around 4 centimetres tall, while slim type optical drives are around 1 cm tall.
Disc rot is the tendency of CD, DVD, or other optical discs to become unreadable because of chemical deterioration. The causes include oxidation of the reflective layer, reactions with contaminants, ultra-violet light damage, and de-bonding of the adhesive used to adhere the layers of the disc together.
Microsoft had previously relegated Media Center and integrated DVD playback support to a paid add-on beginning on Windows 8 due to the cost of licensing the required DVD playback related patents, and the increasing number of PCs that have no optical drives. [17]
An optical disc drive is a device in a computer that can read CD-ROMs or other optical discs, such as DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Optical storage differs from other data storage techniques that make use of other technologies such as magnetism, such as floppy disks and hard disks, or semiconductors, such as flash memory.
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