What is optical drive?

1. What is optical drive?

In computer science, the optical disc drive is the disk drive that uses a laser light as part of the process of reading or writing data from a file to optical discs. The optical discs through beams of light that interpret the refractions provoked on its own emission.

Optical disc drives are an integral part of standalone consumer devices such as CD players, DVD players and DVD recorders. They are also commonly used in computers to read software and media file in disk format. Optical drives (along with flash memories) have moved the floppy drives and magnetic tape units due to the low cost and almost ubiquity of optical drives on computers and consumer entertainment hardware.

And now the DVD optical drive is most popular:

ASUS SDRW - 08D6S DVD Optical Drive

2. The Feature and Function

The sides of the optical drive contain threaded holes that make it easier to mount in the 5.25 inch unit compartment inside the computer case. The optical disc is mounted so that the rear end has the connections that are located inside the cabinet.

The optical disc drive is a piece of computer hardware that is the size of a paperback. On the front of the unit you have a small button that will allow you to open or close the unit compartment. That way it's how we can insert the CD, DVD or BD discs so that they can be read by the unit.

On the back of the optical drive we will find a port in which we will be able to insert a standard cable, which must be connected directly to the motherboard. The type of cable generally depends on the type of optical drive being used, but is usually included when buying the optical drive. We will also have a connection intended for the power supply of the device, which must be connected to the power supply.

3. Optical disc Classification

An optical disc is a digital data storage format, which consists of a circular disc in which the information is encoded and stored, which making some microscopic furrows with a laser on one of the flat faces that compose it.

Compact discs (CD), versatile digital discs (DVD) and Blu-ray discs (BD) are the most common types of optical media that can be read and recorded by these units.

CD

The compact disc (known as CD) is an optical digital support used to store any type of information (audio, images, video, documents and other data). You can write ' CD ' (as pronounced) because it has been accepted  its pronunciation by use.

DVD

The DVD is a data storage optical disc whose standard emerged in 1995. Its acronyms correspond to digital versatile disc. In its beginnings, the intermediate V made reference to video (digital Videodisk), due to its development as a replacement of the VHS format for the distribution of video to the households.

HD DVD

HD DVD (by the acronym of High density Digital versatile disc), was an optical storage format developed as a standard for High definition DVD by Toshiba, Microsoft and NEC companies as well as by several film producers can store up to 30GB.

Blu-ray

The Blu-ray disc, known as Blu-ray, is a new generation optical disc format, developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) used for video of high definition (HD), 3D and UltraHD and with higher storage capacity of high density data than DVD.