Reasons You Should Still Keep an Optical Drive Around
You may believe that optical drives are no longer necessary because most contemporary desktop and portable computers do not come equipped with one by default. The fact of the matter is that everyone ought to have an optical drive stashed away somewhere, since there is a good possibility that you will require it at some point.
Bootable Optical Discs
Technically speaking, a bootable optical disc is not required in order to install operating systems, access live CDs, or utilize bootable recovery tools. A bootable flash drive or any other USB storage device can be used to format a volume so that it can be used as a bootable volume. However, it is significantly more difficult than making a disc that can be booted.
Additionally, flash disks are not inexpensive. At the very least, they are not inexpensive enough for one to buy several of them and store them in a drawer along with other equipment for use in case of an unexpected emergency. In addition, if you don’t connect the drive in at regular intervals, the flash memory on the device could get something called “bit rot.” That isn’t to say that optical discs don’t experience disc rot (they do! ), but the time until flash memory starts losing the charge that represents data in each memory cell can be sooner than you might expect. Optical discs do experience disc rot, so don’t get the two confused.
Storage that is Low-Cost, Reliable, and Long-Term
Optical discs are an excellent option for long-term data storage due to their excellent longevity and reliability. While we are on the subject of disc rot and the longevity of media, Assuming that you keep your discs in accordance with the rules provided by the manufacturer, they are likely to live significantly longer than you really require them to do so. Because CDs and DVDs are so inexpensive, you can easily burn numerous copies of the same data for redundancy and store them in multiple locations at the same time if you choose to do so.
What is the average lifespan of a disc? An excellent article on the lifespan of optical discs can be found on the website of the Canadian Conservation Institute. This article not only provides information on the best procedures to follow when backing up data to disc, but it also provides estimates of the average lifespan for the various types of discs. The materials that are used to make burnable discs are all different.
On the other hand, a record management metallic gold layer DVD-R should be good for between fifty and one hundred years, in contrast to the usual lifespan of a DVD-RW, which is just five to ten years. Despite the fact that a CD-R disc with phthalocyanine dye and a gold metal layer can only store 700 MB of data at a time, the discs are rated to last for more than a century.
The vast majority of people in this day and age watch movies or television series through streaming services, yet there is a vast library of content that is only available on DVDs and Blu-rays that cannot be found on any streaming service at any one time. You will have access to all of that content if you have an optical drive, including some rare jewels that may never be made available for purchase again. It would be a shame if you stumbled upon an interesting DVD, perhaps at a library or secondhand store, but you were unable to watch it because you did not have a $20 drive stashed away in a drawer somewhere in your house.
Investing in a UHD Blu-ray drive is a smart move to make if you want to squeeze every last drop of performance out of your 4K desktop or laptop display. Even the most advanced streaming services continue to rely heavily on compression techniques in order to make it possible to watch content over the internet. There is just no way to adequately compare the video quality of a Blu-ray disc to that of a streaming service.
The same is true for musical genres. The quality of audio on CDs continues to be superior to that of standard lossy music compression formats, and you may still purchase new and secondhand records on CD. You are able to listen to this music in its original format when you have an optical drive, or you can convert CDs that you come across into digital audio files that you are able to sync to your mobile devices. Anyone who enjoys searching for undiscovered gems by perusing used music stores will be able to attest to the fact that many albums are not available on any streaming service.
In the dim and distant past, personal computer games were kept inside of containers known as “boxes” and placed on store shelves. PC gaming may be mostly digital these days, but there is still a vast library of classic PC games available on disc, and it is nearly always possible to get a PC game operating on newer computers, even if you need to employ a few workarounds to make it happen.
It’s frequently overlooked that Steam lets you back up your games in the convenient form of files the size of DVDs, but in order to play them, online activation is still required. On the other hand, Good Old Games (GoG) sells games without digital rights management protections, and you are free to make your own physical disc backups of these titles. These backups will never require online activation to work, even in the event that GoG ceases to exist.
It is not difficult to locate an optical drive; at least for the time being, they are still widely available. On the other hand, there is a considerable probability that your desktop computer does not have a drive bay at all that could accommodate an internal optical drive, and it is nearly guaranteed that your laptop does not support the insertion of an internal drive.
Because of this, external DVD and Blu-ray drives are now the best solution available. You are not required to use them constantly; you need just plug in the drive whenever you want to read from or write to a disc. In a similar vein, you only need to purchase a single disk in order to make it accessible across all of your PCs.
These days, external USB DVD burner drives are incredibly affordable. Even for drives manufactured by reputable brands, you can expect to pay no more than $30 for the drive.
The LG external DVD burner is a space-saving solution that provides all of the functionality you require from a DVD drive without getting in the way. It fits perfectly into your laptop bag, allowing you to put it away and forget about it until you actually need it.
You also have the option of purchasing a UHD Blu-ray burner, which not only enables you to watch movies in 4K resolution, but also, and this is extremely important, provides you with access to writable discs that may be as much as 100GB in size.
If you have a Mac, you should be able to utilize the vast majority of USB drives without any problems; however, you may need to provide additional power to some drives before they can spin up. Apple does sell a USB SuperDrive that is compatible with all recent Macs; so, if you are seeking for the most elegant solution, purchasing one of these would be an excellent alternative.
Keep in mind that even if you come across some floppy disks while you’re working with optical discs, you can still read the data on those disks. This is true even if you’re using an optical disc drive.
