Do you still use optical discs in your computer?

[ActionableMango]

Do you still use optical discs in any of your computers at work or home.

Home audio, home theater, gaming consoles, cars, etc., don't count.

FWIW, I still have optical drives but I think I only use them once a year--tax time.

Turbo Tax on disc has license that allows 5 people to use it and efile, so I buy it on disc and share it with friends and family. Turbo Tax digital requires each person to buy their own copy at the same price or more as the disc. Yes, I know this makes no sense.

 

[AidenShaw]

Do you still use optical discs in any of your computers at work or home.

Home audio, home theater, gaming consoles, cars, etc., don't count.

FWIW, I still have optical drives but I think I only use them once a year--tax time.

Turbo Tax on disc has license that allows 5 people to use it and efile, so I buy it on disc and share it with friends and family. Turbo Tax digital requires each person to buy their own copy at the same price or more as the disc. Yes, I know this makes no sense.

Does an ISO image of a DVD count? All of my work servers can boot from a URL pointing to a bootable .ISO image.

Other than that, I always keep a USB DVD drive around for booting LiveCDs and other tools - useful for the systems that are unable to boot from a URL.

Also find them useful for playing BDs and DVDs of movies.

Those are about the only use cases for me now.

 

[ActionableMango]

Does an ISO image of a DVD count? All of my work servers can boot from a URL pointing to a bootable .ISO image.

I'm going to call that particular use case "not optical".

Everything else you mentioned, yes.

Actually, I keep LIVE CDs around too--I completely forgot about that. I imagine there is a LIVE USB Thumbdrive equivalent, but I haven't looked into it. For some reason bootable USB Thumbdrive doesn't seem to be as easy to make nor as reliable as a bootable disc.

 

[ThisBougieLife]

I do, yes. Most of my digital music collection is ripped from CDs, so I use the optical drive to rip lossless files from my audio CD collection.

I haven't used a disc for a program in a while, though.

 

[AidenShaw]

I'm going to call that particular use case "not optical".

Everything else you mentioned, yes.

Actually, I keep LIVE CDs around too--I completely forgot about that. I imagine there is a LIVE USB equivalent, but I haven't looked into it.

Yep, most of the Linux distributions can build a LiveUSB thumb drive. There are also some useful (not perfect) tools around to convert most bootable ISO images to bootable USB thumb drives.

Microsoft has provided instructions for installing Windows 10 (and back to at least 7) from a bootable USB thumb drive.

As far as "not optical" for the URL boot - the system firmware emulates a USB DVD drive from the URL - so from viewpoint of the system you are booting from a USB DVD drive.

 

[kazmac]

Yep, still have a dvd drive hooked up to my iMac. Rip and watch movies rather frequently

 

[flat five]

i voted #4 instead of #3 because it's been a very long time (in tech time) since i've used an optical disk.. of any sorts (data/music CD/ DVD player/ etc)

i'm guessing around 2012 was the last time i used a disk.. probably longer.

 

[ActionableMango]

As far as "not optical" for the URL boot - the system firmware emulates a USB DVD drive from the URL - so from viewpoint of the system you are booting from a USB DVD drive.

There has to be lasers involved!

Actually, in all seriousness, the reason why I made the poll is because I was wondering whether or not the mMP would have a physical 5.25" bay in order to support physical discs. Then that made me wonder how many people still need it.

My wild guess was 30% or fewer. I am shocked to see it is 87.5% (so far). Admittedly it is after hours so the results might change in a big way over the next couple of days.
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i voted #4 instead of #3 because it's been a very long time (in tech time) since i've used an optical disk.. of any sorts (data/music CD/ DVD player/ etc)

That is exactly how I intended #4 to be used!

I don't really think anyone here doesn't know what an optical disc is.

 

[flat five]

i voted #4 instead of #3 because it's been a very long time (in tech time) since i've used an optical disk.. of any sorts (data/music CD/ DVD player/ etc)

i'm guessing around 2012 was the last time i used a disk.. probably longer.

i just did a quick search and found a post of mine in july2013:

i can't remember the last time i used one but it's been a couple years at least..
​

..so i'll safely say 2011 was the last time i used a disk.

 

[JesterJJZ]

I burn video to DVDs and Blurays. My BR-R drive is external, so I don't care about having an optical bay in my tower. If anything I would probably put more hard drives in there like on my current towers.

 

[flowrider]

Yes, I still do. I still keep some of my major programs on disk. I store photos on disk. My cMP has two optical drives. One is a BD drive and the other a DVD drive. Both are LG drives. A big gripe I have is that F12 no longer works to eject the drives in Sierra. I must take the time to open and close the drive using the icon in the top strip.

Lou

 

[ventricle]

Rarely but essential when needed.

 

[AidenShaw]

There has to be lasers involved!

What's the difference between an emulated laser and a physical laser? Be careful with your answer, because there are lots of emulations around that we don't notice!

However, I'm quite comfortable with a system without actual lasers. Either emulated DVDs or easily portable USB BD/DVD drives are fine.

If your poll was "what do you think if Apple drops support for ISO 9660 in the mMP?" I would go ballistic with a MOAB's NO!

People use optical drive filesystems quite often - even if their system doesn't have a laser.

 

[BenTrovato]

For console gaming yes because the disc has trade in value whereas the digital download becomes valueless. Otherwise no practical use for optical discs.

 

[LauraJean]

I have many dvds and play them on my 2010 MacBook Pro. I infrequently rip cds. If the drive ever breaks and can't be replaced at a reasonable price, I would buy one to use with my 2015 MacBook Air.

 

[now i see it]

In 1999 I burned over 1000 CDs of more than 10,000 photographs that I had scanned at hi-res for a stock photographer over the course of several months using multiple burners & Macs.

I will never burn another CD or DVD again for the rest of my life.

 

[slughead]

I'm surprised so many answered yes. Occasionally my family will gift me a blueray and I'll rip it onto my HTPC. I still answered "no" though because I think that's the spirit of the question.

I've got to have an optical drive in my house, but probably gathers more weight in dust than weight in discs.

 

[kschendel]

It's become one of those things that I don't need often, but when I need it, it's essential. I don't think I would bother designing an optical drive into a new system; an outboard USB-connected drive is good enough for me.

 

[flyinmac]

I have one Blu Ray and 5 DVD-writers on my Mac Pro. Used quite often. And often simultaneously.

 

[skottichan]

I haven't used optical discs on my computers in about 2 years. I do still use them for my gaming consoles (generally if there's a collectors' edition).

 

[Daniel Reed]

bluray

Yes, on a Mac

 

[flowrider]

And often simultaneously.

Yes, right. When I'm updating a program, I will use both of my drives. I'll copy everything from one drive to the blank disk on the other, then add the update to the new disk and voila. Really quite handy.

Lou

 

[Yahooligan]

I actually had to out of necessity recently, the only way to install Windows 10 on my wife's cMP was to create a bootable Windows 10 DVD since it won't install via USB stick. I can't remember the last time I used on before that, it's been ages.

 

[thasan]

i actually removed the optical drive in my late 2011 MBP and put an SSD there instead 3/4 years ago Havent use any optical drive for even longer for work or personal use.

 

[Kcetech1]

I might be the odd woman out here, I burn about 30 BD disks a week for client archives, test output for various optical players for company video clips that use dvd or BD drives for video walls and kiosk's and sneakernet project transfers to clients. plus I rip my music and DVD's / BD's to a large NAS as others have mentioned.