An optical drive is usually a CD drive or DVD drive. Optical means it uses lenses. The drive uses a light called a laser. A laser is the most exact and powerful sort of light but the laser in the drive is very, very small. The CD or DVD disk is similar to a mirror and the laser light reflects off it. The disk has very small (microscopic) codes written on it. The drive has a very small camera lens beside the laser which can read the codes. Another part of the drive is plugged in to the computer by a wire (inside) and the code goes through the wire as a signal to the computer.
List of optical drives
- CD drive
- DVD drive
- Blu-ray Disc drive
- HD-DVD drive
- LaserDisc drive
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