Tech

CD DRIVES – WHERE HAVE THEY GONE?

James Flynn, Milborne Port Computers

Since I joined my father at Milborne Port Computers I have been fixing laptops and PCs with optical drives, or as most people know them, the CD drive. The retraction of the drive has been around for a while but suddenly it is one of the questions we are asked a lot – where have they gone?

Before USB memory sticks or external hard drives, CDs were the thing you used to back your computer up with, transport data or store pictures on. When CDs first came on sale, they had storage of 650MB, which was huge compared to what else was around. That would fit around 100 images on or 80 minutes of audio. I’ll never forget walking around with a CD player in my pocket (although I’m also old enough to have had a Walkman which fitted so much better in your pocket). I still have a drawer full of CDs that I use for random older repairs on Windows XP machines and Windows user password issues. 15 years later came the DVD! Same physical size but bang! 4.7GB of storage – a massive leap compared to the CD. Now DVDs also feature in my drawer because Windows 7 and above would only fit on a DVD as the installer for Windows 7 was around 2.4GB. Along with this came DVD movies which when they first came out were normally restricted to 2 hours of movie length, until manufacturers developed formats that allowed for significantly greater storage capacity. Who has still got a cupboard full of DVDs at home? I do!

People got used to CDs and DVDs over the years and in this time, USB drives and external hard drives were released and were gaining traction over these discs for data transfer and backups. But still people were keen on burning things to CD/DVDs, like home movies and pictures.

Now why are people still so keen on them? I think one reason is habit, ‘I’ve had one before, I must have one again with my computer.’ The other is that some new devices you buy for the computer still come with a CD to install the device i.e. printers (which you all know we love!).

The reason why optical drives don’t come fitted anymore is down to space-saving and cost-saving for the manufacturers. The standard-size desktop isn’t really a thing anymore since SFF (Small Form Factor) machines came out which is where everything inside the box is turned on its side or made smaller to fit it in a smaller box. They started to use the same optical drives that they put in laptops in SFF machines but now seem to have scrapped that idea. Some manufacturers do give you the fittings and a plastic plate for the front of the box if you want to buy your own. With laptops it is a case where they cannot fit them in and they add to the weight of the machine and in a world where we want everything thinner, lighter and to have a better battery life, the optical drive is the easiest thing to get rid of.

So, the solution? Get yourself a USB CD/DVD drive, which I have in the aforementioned drawer, and it will plug into any laptop or desktop that has a USB port and won’t break the bank! These normally cost anywhere between £20-£50.

Any problems, as ever, you know where to come!