Do You Still Need a CD/DVD Drive For Your PC?

Do you really need a CD, DVD, or Blu-ray drive in 2023/24? Do they still have a use today? I go through the reasons why you might still want an optical drive, and the reasons why you might not. If you can't decide whether to include an optical drive with your next PC, then watch this video for some help.

[LitchAzazel]

I have a blu-ray drive in my pc and still use it to this day. I wish more PC games were released physically as I'm not a believer in truly owning anything digital.

[rolandcarpenter]

The usefulness of CD's and DVD's now is that for the media that can still be found in this form, it doesn't require a subscription and is often cheaper than buying it digitally if I can buy it used. For example, my family has a huge collection of DVD shows and movies, which if it's enough for me, then I can save hundreds of dollars every year on not owning any streaming services. As another example, the original Skyrim would cost $20 to buy on Steam, but only about $7 as a DVD off of eBay.

[asecretone]

I still need one. I need to exhaust all those free AOL trial discs I acquired over the years

[adriennel]

Something I miss about getting a physical game or music disc was the manual/extras. I still have the huge fold-out Red Dead Redemption game map that came with the xbox360 case.
Great video as always!

[stevejarvis]

I certainly still use my CD/DVD drive because I've got a mass of CD`s purchased over the years and Im not paying for all my music library again via streaming. I still have loads of Vinyl as well, that fell out of fashion along with cassettes, but they're both on the increase now so `never say never`! The have other thing is you have to be so careful nowadays downloading anything because the internet is a dangerous place

[checob]

I prefer games on disc vs download them, because when they are on a disc you actually own the game.

[HairFU]

It's true you will not need a CD/DVD drive for 99, 9% of the time. But I will continue to have a drive inside my computer. For 0, 1% I am happy to have a drive.

[Will_Bx_NYC_]

While you're correct about the diminished need for optical drives, I still find great use for them. Like ripping my CD collection to FLAC. Or watching my wedding video and photos which both on discs.

[YuProducciones]

your pc case looks amazing, taking good care of that OG case I see... well done. love old cases. have 2 of those. Corsair 88R (blacK), and the Graphite 780T white. yes, blue-rays, little drawers and fans controllers are amazing to have in hand-distance in yourdesk

[MFFIV]

The late 1990s/early 2000s 😍 … my favourite era in computing and gaming… maybe even in life.

[jkk]

I have a blu ray rewriter.

Reasons being:
1) I have a big CD collection which I rip to iTunes
2) I have a decent collection of old PC games which still can’t legally be bought on any store platform
3) I have about 700 blu ray movies which I rip to a Plex server

[SnowLynxPreparedness]

I strongly disagree.

Recently I was getting through my all stored backups. All on optical disks.

For 150 disks dating up to 20 years back. Only 5 had bad sectors. And on that 5 faulty disks only 1% of data had corrupted files and individual files had maximum 5% loss of integrity.

Compare to my hard drive stored data - 50% of hard drives died making total loss of 50% of data.

Conclusion - if I would not use optical drives to preserve my data - I would loose 50% of them.

Furthermore. Can any hard drive or USB stick protect your data from intentional harm - no - all data stored on HDD and USB can be modified or deleted.

So - yes - optical drives are necessity.

Furthermore - with "parity files" it is 100% safe storage - not even considering use of "carbon" or "gold" disks for storage safety.

[BNWilliamGaming]

You probably should have mentioned that Windows 10 doesn’t even include DVD-Video capabilities out of the box! Say hello to a $15 addon on instead! Or just use something like VLC…

[Jojje]

While i may not use the optical drive in my computer often, i’m very thankful to have opted for a case that supports it alongside one when i do need its capability. Such uses include:

* Watching DVDs or Blu-Ray movies. While streaming is convenient, i do prefer having actual copies of the movies that i estimate watching more times than just once.
* Ripping music or older CD-based PC games for personal backups.

Plus, there’s the ”feel” to it. Using a computer that lacks an optical drive feels, to me, odd and wrong. It’d be like eating a burger without any toppings. The meat and buns may be good, but there’s something missing.

[milkymoocowmoo]

I built a new PC late last year and actually went out of my way to buy an "old" case (Define R6) because it still had a slot for an optical drive, multple 3.5" HDDs, and multiple up-front USB ports. Admittedly I've not used my old DVD-RW yet, but I like having it there! My motherboard drivers & utilities came on a flash drive rather than a disc, a sign of the times.

Edit to add: discs are still in constant use *elsewhere* in the household. I buy all my Xbox & PlayStation games on disc wherever possible, and have a healthy collection of movies & TV series on Blu-ray as well (and would have even more if distributors would stop putting put lazy 2k upscales as "4k" releases...but that's another topic).

[tin-toretto]

I must admit that since I built my PC, 2 years ago, I didn't use quite often my optical drive. But for me, there are 2 main reasons I still need it :
- When I buy my albums on CD, I always make a perfect copy with Exact Audio Copy.
- The ability to archive long term with M-DISCs
Thanks for your video, it's great to see you back.

[Orange-Jumpsuit-Time]

I use my DVD Drive to install an earlier version of Microsoft Suite before they started bending you over for leasing fees.

[contra]

I still think the Optical drive for CD/DVD is one of the most important things that was for PCs or games in general. The moment optical died slowly because manufacturers did not add any extra space or slots for this thing, many games started to become digital only, thus these days only console games have blueray discs but PCs only have digital downloads through Steam, epic etc. launchers, which allows game companies to can take games from you any time also sometimes if you aren't logged in steam, epic etc. you can't even start ur singleplayer games without internet.

[admiral]

As always, loved the video.

Do you still game at all? Might be an interesting variety to film a “let’s play” of something current or popular back in the day.

[NataliaTheia]

My PC laptop doesn't have a built-in CD drive, so I had to buy an external one in order to be able to listen to my CD albums (or install my video editing software which came on a disc). I'm old school, I prefer physical media, especially physical music, but I'm not against digital media either. I'm open-minded regarding digital and conservative regarding physical.