WOF: How often do you use your computer's optical drive?

I would like to point out that most Operating Systems are provided Via Cd or Dvd so taking out the optical drive would pose a large problem when trying to switch your os.

Still use mine a few times a week to watch a couple of movies along with a weekly backup. Most of my CD's have been converted to mp3 so it doesn't get used as often as in the past.

Once or twice a month if I can.

I use it rarely these days, In fact it was unplugged since the summer. Just plugged it in because my Boot Manager got corrupt a few days ago.

To install old games sometimes or if I buy a game in store on release day. Steam offers better updating thought - regret my non steam copy of bc2. I got some dvds from blockbusters the other month and watched them using the dvd drive. But games that require the disk are a real drag nowadays.

Very very rarely. Maybe 4-5 times a month.

I still like to have an occasional back up of very important work on DVD's, generally every 3 months or so.

I certainly don't rely on my optical drive.

Maybe 2-3 times a month, mainly to load new programs or to rip CDs/DVDs. Occasionally I will burn a mixCD to listen to in the car, and backups of all my pictures are burned on DVDs. But for most games that require a disc in the drive, i've either been able to find a fix online to bypass the DRM, or I have been able to mount an image of the disc.

I actually have two drives, a DVD-ROM and a DVD burner, but seems like kind of a waste now that I think about it. On my first computer I got in 1999, I used to do a lot of copying directly from one drive to the other.

Use mine at least 3 or 4 times a week but then I still use a floppy drive now and the

Once every few months to rip a CD or two

only to ever install windows, and thats it.

I use it all the time when needing to send large photoshoots to customers with picture files being 24mb a piece and 400mb Tiffs most. It is still the cheapest process for this and my client base and models. Other than that I don't use it at all.

Optical drive? whats that? shops still sell them?

Almost every time I play a game =P

So about once or twice a day depending on what game or games I play, I have and will always prefer to buy games, films and music on disc. Even if I wanted to buy digital stuff I couldn't do it for everything because the connection I use is crap.

Up until about 5 years ago, I used it almost every day. Now, it only gets used once every 2 or 3 months....

That's what she said...

I actually used my optical drive not too long ago to upgrade my XP system to Windows 7 64-bit. I downloaded the installation files from digital river, but since I wasn't able to launch the 64-bit installer from within XP 32-bit, I had to create an ISO out of the installer files and burn it to DVD.

I also use my optical drive to play an old game every once in a while or a DVD movie. So yeah, I think I'm still using mine.

I barely use it at all.

my dvd-rom is somewhere in the room for years.

I use the optical drive approximately two to three times in the lifetime of the system: For installing OS and drivers when I build it, and whenever I need to (re)install software that is only available on CD/DVD.

From my point of view the optical drive is only slightly more useful than the floppy. I have stopped installing an optical drive for my builds; instead I have a portable USB drive I can fall back on for the once-in-a-year occasion where I actually need one.

I use it for a few old games I play every so often and one new game. I used it 2 weeks ago for street fighter 4. Before that idk how long its been. 6 months+. I bought a dvd burner\drive for like 20$ since they are so cheap.

I rarely use my optical drive in my laptop. I think it would make more sense to drop optical drives from laptops altogether but still sell external optical drives for the rare occasion that you do need it (ripping audio cd to hdd, etc). With the ability to boot from usb flash drives and the like I don't find a need for optical drives anymore. I believe blu-ray will be the last portable disk as there are just better ways of transporting and storing data.