Optical disc drive
An optical drive is a type of disk drive. The drive uses a light called a laser in order to read or write data to a disk. Depending on the type of drive, an optical drive can or cannot read certain types of disks. Also, certain drives can read and write information, while other drives can only read information. CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays are the most common types of disks read by an optical drive.
List of optical drives
- CD drive
- DVD drive
- Blu-ray Disc drive
- HD-DVD drive
- LaserDisc drive
Optical Disc Drive Media
The 12 centimetre slot-loading optical drive of the Wii game console is compatible with 8 centimetre diameter discs to support GameCube discs (RVL-001 model only), the predecessor game console, allowing for backward compatibility.
Some optical drives support measuring the error rate in the error correction code. An individual error does not cause data loss yet, but a higher rate means the error correction mechanism is more strained, which can predict a possible age-related future data loss. The depicted rate is well within a healthy range.
Sharp laser optical assembly. All 6 focusing and tracking coils can be clearly seen.
Optical pickup unit with two visible potentiometers
Philips CDM laser assembly.
The optical sensor out of a CD/DVD drive. The two larger rectangles are the photodiodes for pits, the inner one for land. This one also includes amplification and minor processing.
Opening the tray of a CD-RW manually with the help of a paper clip
Digital audio output, analog audio output, and parallel ATA interface
HP C4381A CD-Writer Plus 7200 Series (1998), showing parallel ports to connect between a printer and the computer
