just check mine as suddenly i remember i didnt use it for a year or so and its dead lol do you still use optical drive? i blame it for everything is downloadable nowdays no wonder i didnt use it for so long
I still use my optical drives. If you require installing OSes on both desktop and servers, optical drives are one of the most important tools. Can't leave without them.
I use it for burning music or movies. I'm using mostly virtual machines now for multiple operating systems so I just need the ISO to do the install. It's amazing how fast installs go this way.
I have two optical drives on my main PC. A DVD-ROM and DVD writer. Not sure why I have two really... The most I use the DVD-ROM drive is to rip my cd's into FLAC (EAC) and MP3 (Zune). I do occassionaly burn some images on dvd (like archiving, drive imaging/burning, etc... )
Mine can't read certain discs properly, but I don't think the drive is faulty because I rarely use it!
lol sometimes optical drive too have their own mood what to read i thought nowdays everyone install windoze with flash drive instead..i have a 4gb stick ready with windoze inside incase shet happens
Yeah, that's why I hate optical drives. Unfortunately, not all systems can boot off USB, especially the older systems.
oh ya forget some old system can't boot from usb last time bought a pioneer i think dvd player, so frustrated many dvd cant be played but my sis have the last laugh as her cheapo china made read everything
I think there are two issues at work here, the 1st of which is wether or not the USB thumb IS actually configured as a 'mass storage device'. That phrase is key to solving the prob as some thumbs are recognized as a flash drive... unsupported in bios, HOWEVER that is fixed with the new Vista thumbs. I had this issue 9 months ago when for farts and giggles I tried to load a thumb drive onto W98se. DRIVERware is key. A particular 3-letter brand had awful driver code, and even left the name blank. (Problem big-time in W98se, as its 'null'). Once the ini was tweaked, the thumb loaded properly. Of course, it died 60 days later as most of these particular brand of thumbs do. But it could image a 3.5Gb HDD of op-sys. 2nd is wether XP whatever will actually LET you do this... I would thoroughly investigate user/admin privilidges and restrixions. Might be a maze to get it to accept. I do not recommend imaging anything absolutely essential onto a stick, thats why CD-R was invented.
