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.

Most modern laptops lack an optical drive, yet CDs and DVDs are still used in many households, whether for playing old movies, installing older software, or even for making physical backups. An ...

Hard drives and optical drives are the most failure-prone items on a laptop. They're also among the easiest to swap out, upgrade, or, in some cases, live without. Here are the best fixes for saving, ...

We love that modern laptops have become so slim and light, but we aren’t happy about the disappearance of ports and features. It’s been forever since I’ve seen a laptop with an optical disc drive! If ...

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Laptops with a physical CD/DVD drive feel like relics of the past. But they do still exist. And no, they are not necessarily weird, unknown ...

When I wrote a series of How-To guides showing how easy it was to swap old Mac hard disks for new solid state drives (SSDs), I focused on raw upgrades — slow mechanical drives for fast chip-based ones ...

If your CD/DVD drive takes more than a minute to recognise a disk, or your burner is starting to fail when you create discs, you need to take action. Fixing a dirty lens Clean the lens using a ...