What are optical drives? In the simplest terms, an optical drive is the piece of hardware that lets a device read and interact with a disc. These discs can be CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, game discs, and ...

Sony is getting out the optical disk business as it tries to restructure and shift to businesses that are more relevant to current device trends. Sony to exit PC-use optical drives, say reports - CNET ...

If you are looking for a laptop with an optical disk drive that delivers good battery performance, then the HP 15q is an excellent option to consider. To start with, ...

Step back to the early CD-ROM era, though, and things were a little kookier. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, drives hit the market that required the use of a bulky plastic caddy to load discs.

WOF: How often do you use your computer's optical drive? By Jose Vilches March 4, ... When Apple announced the first iMac in 1998 many were taken aback by the lack of a floppy disk drive.

The disc drive’s spin into obscurity may have started swirling faster last week. Apple’s new iMac, its flagship desktop computer, was released Friday. For the first time, it has no disc drive.

Technology is ever changing. What was ubiquitous one day can be archaic the next. Cassette drives no longer run software. We don’t transfer files on a floppy disk, either 5.25-inch or 3.5-inch ...

This coincided with the phasing out of optical/hard disk drives not only for laptops but even some PCs now. If you have no way to use physical methods, then you’re forced to use digital ones.

If you have an external optical drive in OS X, the built-in Eject key on the keyboard may not work with it, so here are some options for handling external discs on your Mac.