Can someone explain Optical Drives to me?

Ruby Martis: an optical disc drive (ODD) is a disk drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves near the light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only read from discs, but recent drives are commonly both readers and recorders. Recorders are sometimes called burners or writers. Compact discs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs are common types of optical media which can be read and recorded by such drives.Optical disc drives include devices such as CD players, DVD players and DVD recorders. A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data. An SSD emulates a hard disk drive interface, thus easily replacing it in most applications.With no moving parts, solid-state drives are less fragile than hard disks and are also silent (unless a cooling fan is used); as there are no mechanical delays, they usually enjoy low access time and latency....Show more

Floy ! Fague: I think you are mixing questions. #1 - You can Read & Write CD's & DVD's#2 - You can Read & Write CD's, you can only read DVD's (not write)#3 - Blu-Ray Reader - High Definition optical format (same size as CD/DVD)But then you ask about GB and GB Solid State.A hard drive (not optical) is traditionally magnetic media. It spins on an axis and a magnetic head moves around reading and writing the data.A solid state "hard drive" or "storage" is one where the data is stored on some sort of flash (chip based) memory. There are NO moving parts. Solid state is awesome and fast, but it's very expensive. Same technology as in an iPhone......Show more

Alonso Crehan: I don't care much about optical drives. As long that it can read or write cd's and dvd's its fine with me. If you have budget for blue ray then go for it.

Natalya Sydney: No.1 will play and burn CDs and DVDsNo.2 will play CDs and DVDs, It will burn CDs only.No.3 will play Blu Ray discs, CDs and DVDs.! Can't tell if it will burn any of them.GB solid state is (I'm! guessing here) a solid state hard drive. Instead of using magnetic disks and read/write heads it uses flash memory, like a USB flash drive, to store data....Show more

Sonya Volcko: Wiki can help you with that:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_drive

Darrel Stele: Sounds pretty good. For recordable media, if the session is not closed you can write more information to the disc, but is does not overwrite the previous data. Also, there is a DVD+R format and DVD+RW, both similar to the DVD-R and DVD-RW. See the source for more info on the formats.