Most optical drives today are combo CD/DVD drives that support DVDs and all the CD formats: CD audio, CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW. The speeds of the drives are rated by their CD-ROM and DVD transfer rates.

The most common types are CD, DVD and Blu-ray ... been superseded by USB-based flash drives and external hard drives. Following are the major categories of optical discs in order of writability.

This month HP introduces its latest DVD burners into the market, now with Super Multi support. As well as burning high-capacity DVD±R(W) (double layer) media, these drives are also read/write ...