DVD drive

As of 2015, DVD drive is the most common for desktop PCs and laptops, supporting all existing recordable and rewritable DVD formats.
CD-ROM drive, CD writer drive, Combo (CD-RW/DVD-ROM) drive are no longer in production

What is an optical disc drive?

An optical disc drive (ODD) is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs.

Optical disc drives are an integral part of standalone appliances such as CD players, DVD players, Blu-ray disc players, DVD recorders, certain desktop video game consoles, such as Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One, Nintendo Wii U, and Sony PlayStation 3, and certain portable video game consoles, such as Sony PlayStation Portable.

• Related: 5 best external drive cleaner tools to use

They are also very commonly used in computers to read software and consumer media distributed on disc and to record discs for archival and data exchange purposes.

Nowadays, there are more types of disc drives available built-in or external DVD-ROM drive, BD-ROM drive, Blu-ray Disc combo (BD-ROM/DVD±RW/CD-RW) drive, and Blu-ray Disc writer drive.

Internal DVD drive

Most internal drives for personal computers, servers and workstations are designed to fit in a standard 5.25″ drive bay and connect to their host via an ATA or SATA interface. If you are interested, there is a varied selection of  internal drives on Amazon.

External DVD drive

External drives usually have USB or FireWire interfaces. Some portable versions for laptops power themselves from batteries or directly from their interface bus.

You can find a vast selection of external drives on Amazon, but here you can find the best optical drives for laptop.

DVD drive issues on Windows PC

There are various reasons why a DVD drive is not working or not detected. The following troubleshooting guides will help solve some DVD drive problems you may encounter:

• DVD drive missing
• CD/DVD-ROM not Working
• Laptop’s optical drive not working
• My CD/DVD Drive Can’t Read any DVDs, But it Reads CDs
• Windows DVD Maker Fails to Burn on Windows 10
• Windows Doesn’t Recognize CD/DVD Drive
• Clear.fi media not playing DVD
• DVD Won’t Play on ASUS Laptop