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 ...

I haven't purchased an optical disc drive (ODD) for my PC since...actually, I don't even recall the last time I bought one. It's even been a minute since I owned a PC with a 5.25-inch drive bay to ...

If all you plan to do with your netbook is surf the web, check your email, and maybe enjoy some downloaded music and movies, you might not even notice the missing disc drive. But if you want to ...

At first look we thought this was a plotter, but it’s really more of a dot matrix (or line matrix) printer. [Bruno] whipped this up using parts from a DVD optical drive. It is capable of moving the ...

One of the most interesting parts of the recent Apple Mac Mini and MacBook Air refresh is that Apple is moving away from optical drives. Apple isn't the only company to do so, raising the question "Is ...