Are you worried that your next PC or laptop might not have an optical drive? How would you cope? Roland Waddilove has the answers
The CD/DVD-ROM drive was once an essential component in desktop and laptop computers, almost as important as the hard disk or graphics card. Its time is rapidly coming to a close, though, as it slowly heads the way of the floppy disk drive. It is dying out; ultra-light laptops do not have them, and even some ordinary laptops with fewer space limitations are not including them as standard. So the question for many is 'can I manage without one?'
A quick look around a couple of high street PC stores recently was enlightening; of the 25 laptops we saw on display, more than half did not have optical drives. It is therefore becoming likely that your next computer won't have one.
Software is mostly downloaded from the internet these days; it is quick and convenient, fast internet connections are common, and so the vast majority of applications download in seconds (a couple of minutes, at most). The problem is that you might have old software on CDs or DVDs that you need to install or reinstall occasionally. If there isn't an optical, how do you install it? You can buy or rent movies online from the Google Play Store, Apple iTunes Store and other places, or there are streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime with have thousands of movies and TV episodes to watch, but many people have built up a library of DVDs; so how would you play them? There are over one hundred Linux distros that could be worth a try, and an ISO file (.iso) can be downloaded, burnt to a DVD-R and used boot up with it. You might just want to run this so-called 'Live disc' without actually installing the distro at all, or you may want to set it up in a partition on the disk drive, or install it into VirtualBox and run it as a virtual machine - but how do you do this if there isn't an optical drive?
Windows 7 was distributed on DVD. If you want to set it up in VirtualBox, perhaps to run old software that doesn't work in Windows 10, it is going to be a problem if your computer does not have an optical drive - so should you limit your options when buying a new computer and only get one that has an optical drive? One thing is pretty certain: at some point in the not-so-distant future, optical drives will completely disappear from all computers and we need to learn new ways.
Hardware Options
Almost everything is digital and online these days, but having occasional access to an optical drive is important, although you don't need to have one in your PC all the time. So, while your next computer might not have a CD/DVD-ROM drive, you may have older machines around your the home or office that have a drive you can use occasionally. As long as one of your computers has an optical drive, it can be used on those rare occasions when you need one.
This means it may be a good idea to keep an old computer just for those occasions. A laptop is the most convenient option, as it can be put away in a cupboard or drawer when it is not being used. So don't dump your old PC or laptop at the local recycling point, hang on to it, it might be useful. An old computer with a CD/DVD-ROM drive can even be shared over the wi-fi network and accessed from your new driveless computer. So now you have a reason to keep that old PC running Windows XP, simply set up the share and connect to it.
Getting a Windows 8 PC to talk to a PC running an old version of Windows is harder than it should be, but it can be done. On the old PC with the CD/DVD drive, go to Control Panel > Folder Options, select the View tab and clear the tick against 'Use simple file sharing'. Click Start and select Computer or My Computer, right click the optical drive (usually D:) and select Sharing and Security. Select the option to share the folder and enter a share name like DVDROM. Select 'Allow this number of users' and set it to 10. Click Permissions and make sure that the Everyone group has all the items ticked in the Allow column.
On the new computer without a CD/DVD, open an Explorer window and select Computer or This PC, go to the Computer tab in the ribbon at the top and click 'Map network drive'. Use the Browse button to find and select the shared CD/DVD drive on the other computer. It then appears Explorer and when there is a disc in the drive, it can be used to run software, browse, pull files off, play movies and so on like it was an internal CD/DVD-ROM.
USB Drives
Provided you have one computer with an optical drive, you can share it and access it on every other computer, but what if you only have one computer and it does not have a CD/DVD-ROM drive? Most of the time it is not needed and you can use the web to listen to music, watch movies, download software and so on. On those occasions that you need one, the best option is to buy an external USB CD/DVD-writer. The advantage of this is that it is easily shared among several computers because it is so light, portable, and is plug-and-play.
USB optical drives are quite cheap and prices start at around £20 for budget models with basic features. This means that buying a desktop PC or laptop that does not have an internal optical drive is not the end of the world. If you find that you cannot live without one, just buy a cheap USB 2 model and plug it in. Many are so low powered that they can work off the limited current provided by the USB port and they do not need a separate external power supply.
The Samsung SE-208GB and the LiteOn EBAU108 are two examples at the budget end of the market and they are around £20 give or take a couple pounds depending on the supplier. The ASUS SDRW 08D3S-U and the LG GP57EB40 are also cheap external USB CD/DVD-writers costing just over £20. There are many more USB optical drives and if you pay a bit more you can have a unit that takes advantage of the higher data transfer speed of a USB 3 port, or has Blu-ray reading and writing capabilities. Top of the range models at around £50 to £60 can read and write pretty much any type of disc you can insert.
Create Disc Images
One of the ways in which you can manage without an optical drive is by copying any discs to the computer's hard disk. Using an old computer or an external USB optical drive, you can copy music CDs, software CDs, clipart CDs, movie DVDs and so on, saving them to the PC's disk as ISO files. These can be accessed like they were discs in an optical drive.
There are several free utilities that can copy a CD or DVD and save to disk as a ISO file, such as the ever popular CDBurnerXP (cdburnerxp.se). Run the program and select Copy or grab a disc. Select the hard disk drive as the target and the file type to ISO (Single track). Click Copy disk and in a few minutes time you will have a ISO file of the CD or DVD. If you are using an old PC to create ISO files you will then need to transfer them to the PC or laptop without an optical drive. Shared folders on Windows can be accessed from other computers over the network, so you could put them in there, or you could use a USB flash memory drive to copy the file.
Most CD/DVD burning software can create ISO files and free ones are fine. Alternatives to CDBurnerXP include Burnaware (burnaware.com), ISO Workshop (glorylogic.com), and Ashampoo Burning Studio Free (ashampoo.com). These tools can be used to turn any CD or DVD into a ISO file saved to the disk drive and this includes DVD movies, provided they are not copy protected in any way. There are utilities that can copy protected DVDs and save them to disk too, but if you want to go down that route, then you will have to find those tools yourself.
Windows Media Player, iTunes, CDex and other utilities are able to copy your music CDs and save them to disk as WAV files if you have the disk space, or MP3s if you don't mind a little compression in return for big disk space savings.
Most software, movies, music, photos and clipart, and other content is available online, and those few old old CDs and DVDs you need can be copied to disk. Windows DVDs, such as XP, Vista and 7 can be copied to the hard disk drive, and from Windows 8 onwards you can download ISO images. All Linux distros are available as downloadable ISO images and it is the standard method of distribution.
Use CD/DVD Disc Images
Now that you have ISO disc images of any CDs and DVDs you need, or have downloaded Linux, Windows or whatever software you require, you can use them on your optical drive-less computer. Disc images can be used to create virtual CD/DVD-ROM drives and Windows can access the contents just as if it was a real optical drive.
Recent versions of Windows have included support for ISO disc images, so 'mounting' one (the virtual equivalent of putting a disc in a drive) is just a matter of double clicking it. If you have copied a DVD movie disc and saved it as a ISO file to the hard disk drive, double click it. It will then appear as a drive in Explorer windows and can be accessed using any software. For example, run VLC media player (videolan.org), go to the File menu, select Open folder, and then select the virtual drive. VLC will play the movie like it was a real DVD in an optical drive.
If you have a clipart CD with images you want to browse, double click the ISO file to mount it and it appears as a drive in Explorer and the contents can be accessed. Subsequently, when you have finished with an ISO image and want to remove it from Explorer, go to Computer (or This PC), right click the virtual drive and eject it.
You can do a lot with basic Windows ISO handling, but you can go a step further and install a CD/DVD-ROM drive emulator. This is a utility that adds a virtual optical drive that looks to the system like a real one. It provides more features and better ISO image handling than Windows.
WinCDEmu (wincdemu.sysprogs.org) is an open source CD emulator that can be used to mount ISO disc images, and also CUE, NRG, NRG, MDS/MDF, CCD, and IMG images. It runs on all versions of Windows from XP upwards and it can create any number of virtual CD/DVD-ROM drives.
There is very little to the program apart from being able to mount a disc image and unmount it. It just works, basically. However, it is also worth noting that there is a portable version of the application that does not require installation. It is especially useful for older versions of Windows that don't have support for ISO images.
DVDFab (dvdfab.cn/virtual-drive.htm) is similar and it enables up to 18 virtual CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives to be added. It can automatically start with Windows and automatically mount disc images. This means that you can switch on your PC and have half a dozen CDs and DVDs in virtual drives ready to use.
Other optical drive emulators include Virtual CloneDrive (slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html) and the commercial offering Alcohol 120% (alcohol-soft.com), which enables you to make backups of CDs and DVDs to disk images for playing on your computer.
Try Linux
Lots of people like to experiment with Linux and try out the various versions and the features they offer. The usual way is to download a ISO disc image, burn it to a disc and then boot the computer with it in the drive (a so called 'Live disc') before deciding if they want to go on to a full install. However, If you do not have an optical drive then this is obviously not possible.
One solution is to use VirtualBox (virtualbox.org) and this creates a virtual computer complete with CPU, RAM, disk, CD/ DVD-ROM drive and so on. It does not matter whether your computer has a real optical drive or not, VirtualBox provides a virtual one for the virtual computer.
In VirtualBox, click the New button in the toolbar to create a new virtual machine and when it has finished, click the Settings button. Select Storage on the left and below Controller: IDE is an empty CD-ROM drive. Select it, click the disc button on the far right of CD/DVD Drive and you can choose a Linux ISO file. When the virtual machine is started, it will boot from the Linux ISO file and you can run it or install it as normal.
Windows can also be installed into a virtual machine in the same way. Download an ISO image of Windows or create one from the disc on another computer and then set it as the CD in the storage settings.
If you would rather boot your computer from a Linux disc rather than a virtual machine, go and get a free copy of Universal USB Installer (bit.Ly/1HUI9Aa). This enables you to convert a Linux ISO file, such as Ubuntu for example, to a bootable USB flash memory drive. You will need one large enough to store the ISO file. Most are under 4GB, although a few are larger than that. Plug in the USB flash drive, run the USB Universal Installer, select the Linux distro and let it do its magic. Afterwards you can boot your PC from the USB flash drive like it was a CD/DVD.
Many Linux distros work as a Live version without installing, as we mentioned earlier, so this is a handy way to test them on your computer without erasing Windows. The USB flash drive can be formatted and a different Linux added when you want to try a new one. Or you can even use it on a variety of machines if you move around a lot.