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 ...

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.

Earlier this year, I found myself caught in a MacBook-induced conundrum. I had just rediscovered the late ’90s and early 2000s psychedelic progressive metal band Tool. In a music world gone totally ...

A decade ago I got my first Mac without an optical drive. So I got an external USB "superdrive" (CD/DVD writer). But that one now no longer works. I don't really need an optical drive, as I've copied ...

Apple was one of the first manufacturers to exclude DVD players from its laptops, and the same quickly became true for iMacs as well. This meant that if you wanted to rip CDs for your iTunes library, ...

External hard drives back up your most important files, but what happens when they malfunction? Here's what to do if your ...

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.

You have it way easier these days, but back in the day, when you wanted to play a game on your PC, you had to take a similar ...

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 ...

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 ...