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.

A mildly annoying trend over recent years has been for USB hardware devices to expose a CD-ROM drive containing their drivers for Windows users. Of course there’s no real CD in there ...

It supports DVD-ROM, DVD-video, CD-R/RW, CD-ROM/XA, CD-ROM ... it's a convenient means of instantly adding a CD/DVD drive to your laptop. At just under $17, it's a cheaper alternative to the ...

A cable used to send audio CD sound to the computer's sound card. When playing audio CDs, CD-ROM drives output analog sound to both a headphone jack and external connector just like a CD player.

If, on the other hand, you were among the few who invested in CD-ROM when it was first released ... for the interface that hooks up the CD drive to your computer, as [Tech Tangents] found out ...