Optical Disc Drives (ODD)
An optical disc drive (ODD) is a drive that uses laser light to read and write data to and from optical discs. There are three main technologies today, Compact Disc (CD or CD-ROM), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) and most recently Blue-ray Disc (BD) which is the latest DVD standard offering twice the capacity of standard DVD’s. Each technologies media can be read and recorded to depending on the drive used, all will read media but only some can write or rewrite.
Optical drives are integral parts of consumer CD, DVD and Blue-ray players but they have also replaced floppy drives and tape drives in computer systems to read software programs and back up data for small scale archival purposes. One of the main benefits of optical drives is their ability to record data from a PC and then play this back on other consumer entertainment systems.
Compact Disc was developed in the early 1980’s for the music industry as a spin off of the unsuccessful Laserdisc technology. The technology was later adapted to include data storage, know as CD-ROM, then later CD-R, write once, and CD-RW, rewritable media. Standard CD’s can hold 80 minutes of audio or up to 800MB of data.
Digital Versatile Disc has the same dimensions as compact discs however can store up to six times as much data, 4800MB (4.8GB). Its main uses are also audio and data storage with variations being available such as DVD-ROM, read only, DVD-R & DVD-R+, record once and read many, DVD-RW & DVD+RW can record and erase data many times.
Blue-ray Disc is designed to supersede the standard DVD format; its main uses are high-definition video and data storage with dual layer discs offering 50GB of data storage capacity. Other benefits of Blue-ray are in data transfer with 4x the speed of standard DVD making Blue-ray an ideal platform for streaming video and archiving personal data. With 25-50GB available per disc, BD allows users to hold up to 10x that of DVD-ROM’s and 70x that of CD-ROM’s. Blue-ray is available as BD-ROM, for pre recorded HD video and software, BD-R which can allow users to record data once for archiving and saving important files and also BD-RE which allows to write and rewrite data many times.
The ODD market has had challenges since the compact disc was first released but has always had a valued place in the consumer and data storage markets. With Blue-ray now shipping in volume and growing quicker than DVD did, thanks to early adoption by PC manufacturers and games consoles such as the Sony Playstation 3, it certainly looks like optical storage will always have a niche in the consumer and PC markets.
