Few Questions about CD/ DVD drives?

I want to know few things about CD/DVD combo optic drives of notebooks.

1- What is the average life expectency of these drives? I mean do they need to be replaced before you need to replace the laptop itself?

2- Can cheeper media storage devices( very low cost CD/ DVDs) damage the optic drive as 2- compared to the standard branded ones?

3- Excessive use of CD/DVD combo drive( eg, by playing movies or playing games which constantly use CD drive to play the game) will shorten the life of these drives?

Thanks

 

Hard to tell about life expectancy. Manufacturers usually give one year warranty on the optical drives, even if other components get 3 years or "lifetime". That should tell you that they do tend to die. However, oddly or not, I haven't had a laptop drive fail on me yet (knocks on wood), even though desktop drives failed quite a few times. Maybe it's because I used the laptop optical drive less.

Of course excessive use can shorten the life span, because it's a mechanical device (spinning engine) and the lens can also get dirty or damaged. But I doubt that low quality media will damage it. At worst, it won't be read/written properly.