Optical drives no longer come pre-installed in most PCs and laptops, yet they’re still indispensable for many users. Whether for playing old DVDs, installing ancient software from CDs, or burning data ...

Optical drives are still practical for many users, whether to play old CDs and DVDs, install software, or create backups—especially with modern laptops, which are usually supplied without a drive.

Having bootable media ready can be a real lifesaver when you need to do a clean installation of Windows. Thankfully, it's easy to set that up. There are two main ways to create bootable media for a ...