Optical disc
Alternatively called a disc drive, optical media, optical storage, and Optical disc drive, an optical disc is any media read using a laser assembly. The most common types of optical media are Blu-ray, CDs (compact discs), and DVDs (digital versatile discs). Computers can read and write to CDs and DVDs using a CD writer or DVD writer drive, and a Blu-ray is read with a Blu-ray drive. Drives such as CD-R (compact disc recordable) and DVD-R (digital versatile disc recordable) drives that read and write information to discs are known as MO (magneto-optic).
There are three main types of optical media: CD, DVD, and Blu-ray. CDs can store up to 700 MB (megabytes) of data, and DVDs can store up to 8.4 GB (gigabytes) of data. Blu-ray discs, the newest type of optical media, can store up to 50 GB of data. This storage capacity is a clear advantage over the floppy disk storage media (magnetic media), which only has a capacity of 1.44 MB. Another advantage of optical media over the floppy disk is that it can last up to seven times longer due to its improved durability.
A CD drive can only read CDs, a DVD drive can only read DVDs and CDs, and a Blu-ray drive can read CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. In other words, newer drives can read older optical discs, but older drives cannot read newer optical discs.
Because these discs are read by light (optical), they should be called optical discs, not optical disks.
What optical disc can hold the most?
Blu-ray discs can hold the most and can hold up to 50 GB of data. BD-R (Blu-ray recordable) is available in 25 GB or 50 GB.
Why is optical media not as popular today?
With the popularity of streaming content and downloading content from the Internet, the popularity of all optical media has greatly reduced. Also, the reduced price of USB (universal serial bus) flash drives that store more data has made optical media a less popular storage solution.