What is an optical drive? A guide to how your computer reads CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs

Optical drives let your computer read and interact with discs like CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays. However, they're quickly becoming ...
Rolling Stone

Don’t Leave Important Data On Discs: Make Backups With These External DVD Drives

Music, movies, and books have gone from physical objects to digital files over the past 10 years, and computer designs have changed with the times. A lot of computers — laptops, all-in-ones, and ...
CNET

Recent TIL articles: SuperDrive cannot read DVD-RAM discs; Apple CD-RW cannot write to high speed CD-RW discs; more

Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio): SuperDrive Ejects DVD-RAM Discs TIL article #60796 confirms what we had already suspected: "The SuperDrive, included with some Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio) computers, ...
SlashGear

Here's Why Your Old DVD Player Can't Read Blu-Ray Discs

While the war for the superior home media format is an ongoing one, it seems that Blu-ray has come out on top when it comes to tangible options. While it faces serious competition of its own from the ...
CNET

HP unveils first DVD+RW drive

The war over DVD recording standards will escalate Monday when Hewlett-Packard unwraps the details on its first DVD drive for PCs that lets people repeatedly record on discs. The DVD-writer dvd100i, ...
PC World

Your CD and DVD backup discs won’t last forever. Copy them before it’s too late

Have you owned PCs for a while now? That is, over decades, not just a few years. Then you probably have dozens of backup CDs and DVDs sitting in your closet, waiting for you to get that data onto more ...