Optical drives are still practical for many users, whether to play old CDs and DVDs, install software, or create backups—especially with modern laptops, which are usually supplied without a drive.

Optical drives no longer come pre-installed in most PCs and laptops, yet they’re still indispensable for many users. Whether for playing old DVDs, installing ancient software from CDs, or burning data ...

Most optical drives today are combo CD/DVD drives that support DVDs and all the CD formats: CD audio, CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW. The speeds of the drives are rated by their CD-ROM and DVD transfer rates.

Apple has finally started putting internal CD-RW drives in its new systems, but that’s of little comfort to those who own earlier Macs. If you long for the unlimited capacity, quick file sharing, and ...

It’s impossible to beat CD-R media in terms of cost or compatibility for backing up important files; freeing up hard drive space; and burning all your favorite tunes to a perfect mixed CD for a friend ...

Do combo movie-watching and music-recording drives have the write stuff? Apparently PC manufacturers think so. After a slow start, combination CD-rewritable and DVD drives are showing up in computers ...

A CD-ROM drive can be used as a stand-alone unit for playing digital audio CDs without interfacing with a computer. The stereo output of CD player available at the audio jack can be amplified using ...

search. It's been posted so many times already.<BR><BR>Put the 2 hard drives on channel 0, and the 2 optical drives on channel 1. <BR>You'll get better performance that way if you're writing something ...

When something goes wrong with your Mac, it's a boon to have a separate, external drive that you can work from — but Apple no longer makes that easy. Here's how to do it. The short answer to how you ...