Optical drives let your computer read and interact with discs like CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays. While nearly every computer had them a few years ago, they're rare to see on new computers now. If you need ...

When his parents denied him a Super NES, he got mad. When they traded a prize Sega Genesis for a 2400 baud modem, he got even. Years of Internet shareware, eBay'd possessions and video game testing ...

Sometimes you may need to reinstall OS X on a computer, but the drive is broken, resulting in an obvious problem with reading the installation DVD. Here are some methods to install OS X around a ...

Mac desktop and MacBook owners are used to living without a CD or DVD drive, but there are occasions where access to one could be handy. AppleInsider explains how to remotely access the CD or DVD ...

If you depend on Apple MacBook for business computing tasks while you're on the road, you probably use the optical drive to perform necessary functions such as burning data backups to disc or for ...

Sometime around 2008 and with the advent of the first MacBook Air, Apple made the declarative statement that the end was in sight for optical drives built into its notebooks. At the time, the lack of ...

I’m just going to come right out and say it: I want the https://www.pcworld.com/products/storage/optical_drives.html to die. I don’t just mean on laptops, either ...

In case you haven't noticed, very few netbooks have ever shipped with an optical drive. You've either had to get a more expensive ultraportable, a thin-and-light or an external ODD in order to have ...

Hitachi-LG Data Storage has come up with a novel idea that combines physical storage with an optical drive. The HyDrive is capable of reading CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs but also has an SSD drive ...

Remember when: Like floppy drives before them, optical disc drives (ODD) were once a mainstay of computer builds. Whether you were installing new software or games, ripping music to your hard drive, ...

It's magnetic. It's electric. It's photonic. No, this isn't going to be about a new superhero trio in the Marvel universe. This is all about our precious digital data. We need to store it somewhere ...

Generally when a game console with an optical drive stops reading discs the first thing that people do is crank on the potentiometer that controls the power to the laser diode to ramp up its output.