If you're into building your own PC, then you must have noticed that few of the new cases come with an optical drive bay. I must be getting old, because I have no idea why anyone would want to build a computer without an optical drive. There are portable BD drives, but they can cost about 3 to 4 times what a standard 5 1/4 drive will. Yes it's aging tech, but there is really nothing to replace them with. It's true you can store stuff on a thumb drive or portable hard drive, but would you really trust either of those for long term storage of a priceless family home movie? Even at their worst a standard DVD is far more likely to outlast a hard drive or thumb drive, a BD disc can last for decades, and an M-Disc is estimated to last for centuries. It's true you could pay for cloud storage, but in my view they're unnecessary money sinks. So again, Optical Drives, yes or no?
yes for loading drivers for printers & whatever. already ran into that problem once with a customer's new laptop that did not have an optical drive so good thing she had high speed internet.
I agree. I just don't get why something as practical and as useful as an optical drive should be made obsolete. If you recall I recently built a PC out of old unused parts I had, of which I have far too many. I needed a new case so I ended up purchasing an older style low end Antec with two 4.25" bays.
This system will be 14 years old in about a week. It came with a RAM and a ROM drive, not to mention one of those drives which handles things like a SD drive. I added a BD drive about 7 years ago. I have room for more optical drives in my case (Apevia X Jupiter). Wouldn't be without them.
Optical drives with the right media can store data for decades, and with the best media for more than a century. I love using flash drives, because they're great for working on the fly, but their storage lifespan is measured at only a few years.
Still using my NEC 3550 burner I bought for burning xbox disks back in 2004.. And having to use palemoon... because this site is totally broken with firefox 96.0.1.
I am using Firefox right now, it is version 97.0.2. Perhaps they fixed whatever the issue was with 96.
still broken.. cant reply to anything using the latest greatest linux nightly build of firefox.. could be something to do with my adblockers setup.. palemoon with pretty much the same setup is working.. so I guess afterdawn is the only site where palemoon is required.
Yep, still harping about case manufacturers not adding 5.25" bays in their new cases. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2146860/why-an-optical-drive-can-still-be-useful.html
I had need to burn a dvd the other day.. For some reason you can't update the proprietary crap os on a proliant server without burning a damn dvd.. It was fun finding a burner that actually worked.. Must have 20 ide ones.. but only the 1 sata.. hmmmm add in the 3 hours to remember where that spool of dvd-r was.. it is a house move away last time I saw those..
I have several old IDE drives, which I no longer use, but I also have a few sata BD/DVD drives. I still use them to store video but mostly as data files to eliminate the need for a player.
