Optical Drives - CD / DVD / Bluray

Optical disc drives are very common in most desktop computers and laptops. These drives have the ability to read CD/DVD/Bluray media or create discs by burning data to them, depending on the type of drive.

Optical disc drives come in three main connection types;

IDE - This type of connection is compatible with older motherboards and can be identified by the large ribbon cable.
SATA - Sata is the newest type of connection and is identified by small red cables a shown.
External - These drives sit outside of the computer and connect via USB, allowing the drive to be transferred easily between computers.

CD and DVD drives have been around for a long time, allowing for a maximum of 700mb and 4.7gb of data to be read or written respectively. Bluray on the other hand is newer technology, allowing discs to hold up to a huge 25gb of data!