Why do people replace ODD for HDD/SSD in laptops?

Why would you lose the ability to play music/watching movies/play games from cds/dvds in laptops? You'll lose one of the best basic parts from a laptop!

 

Most movies/games/music can be stored on a hard drive instead of having to put the CD in every time you want to play a game like back in the day which is why people need the extra storage also. DVDs can be watched on a big screen HDTV, and external optical drives are cheap these days

 

Yeah, optical media is overrated

 

i don't think i've done any of those from a disk for the better part of five years--and a couple of them i do daily...

 

You definitely don't lose the ability to play games or watch movies. Have you ever heard of Steam, or uh, Netflix? If not you should check them out.

I replaced mine because it otherwise doesn't have the option for a normal 2.5" hard drive.

Also, its hard to say what the most 'basic' parts of a laptop are, but I think speakers come first. As far as the best parts I think the screen, touchpad and keyboard come first.

Really? You don't use any of your hard disks to store games, movies etc?

 

Then how could you rip cds for your mp3 player for example? I put a lot of cds in the cd/dvd drive that I couldn't live without.

 

Using a HDD in your ODD slot doesn't prevent you from swapping out the ODD, unless you're booting from it which is not always possible/smart. Also, the ODD not being installed in your laptop doesn't even prevent you from using it, there are plenty (I happen to have 2 in my house) of ways to use ODDs with a USB cable.

 

i suppose you have me on a slight technicality for the time being--and even that's slowly but surely changing.

 

It's nice having the extra HDD space onboard, and an external ODD is a heck of a lot less fragile than an external HDD. Plus I got to upgrade to a BRD burner with an external.

 

It really depends on the user, I for one rarely use an ODD but would rather have the extra diskspace for work (virtual machines eats a lot of space), while having the option of an SSD drive as a primary drive.

besides an ODD enclosure at around 20usd in ebay is cheap enough for the few times I would need an ODD.

if it was the other way around and I relied more on ODD for music/movies and whatnot then that's what's going in my machine

 

I still buy games trough CD's because my internet is too slow for downloading them

But other than that, I don't have much use. Sometimes I do read some CD's but I don't use it that often. Having an extra HDD would be nice

 

The only reason I still need a DVD drive is to reinstall operating system. Sometimes (very seldom though) I also use it to make a DVD image of a new game that I just bought (I purchase most of my games through Steam). My laptop only has one bay for a HDD. I wanted to use an SSD + HDD combo, to enjoy massive improvement in OS responsiveness while having the storage capacity. A friend gave me a USB DVD drive as a gift. End of story .

 

reinstalling from a bootable usb drive is quite a bit faster if you haven't yet tried it.

 

You should try with with an image on one SSD installing it to another, it goes silly fast ^-^.

 

I do it maybe once in 2 years, so I won't bother, at least for now. My current system has been up and running with no problems for nearly 2 years now, even though I've upgraded graphics card twice (5870M->6970M->7970M), I've upgraded my laptop's display, and the HDD twice, going from 320GB to 500GB to 1TB.

 

Well the MSI 15 inch has 2 HDD bays anyway so it's a special case in its size class.

The point you hit using the ODD is a raid 5 array of 3 disks or raided SSDs and a 1TB mech drive.

 

Netflex may be great if your in the States, but being stationed oveseas like I am I can't get access to it. That is one of the reasons why I own over 500 blu-rays, plus I love the uncompressed sound that you can't get via netflex.

 

GX740 (my laptop) is a fairly old laptop, it has one HDD bay only.

 

With Steam, Spotify, Pandora, Hulu and other online services as well as ample amount of flash drives, I never had a need for the ODD in my U41SV in my 8 months of usage. So I yanked it out and added another SSD to the mix. :thumbsup:

In the event I do need to use a disc which is like really rare, I had an external.

 

Are you just being dense on purpose?

 

To each their own. I like having a blu-ray drive just because I enjoy blu-ray movies. But I admit that is few and far between these days with ripping my stuff to my server, and an external will manage fine with that. Although my currently laptop does have a blu-ray drive in it I have the caddy in case I decide to go with extra storage. I have thrown an HDD filled with movies and TV when I've hit the road for a few days, gives me options.

 

woah bro whats that supposed to mean chill out

what the hells wrong with adding a 2nd SSD? did you not notice laptops being sold with more than 1 SSD lately?

 

Now I have to defend the oppisite side. So now that the current models are being shipped with a 2nd slot...are you saying that replacing the OD is no longer needed?

 

Flashdrives
Steam
Daemon Tools Lite
Why not have dual SSDs?

Really, the only thing I use my DVD drive for is to burn CDs for my car (har har, I'm stuck in the past!) and to play Cnc Generals/ZH (it doesn't play nicely with DTL).

 

Oh yeah, this I can totally relate. But now that I'm not driving anymore, not much point burning the CDs.

 

Umm obviously that depends on whether the 2nd slot is a normal 2.5" bay and if your trying to put a 2.5" drive in it, or if it just has an mSATA port and it already has an SSD in it to boot from + the standard 2.5" space, OR obviously my notebook it is necessary if I want to use a 2.5" drive even though it has 2 spaces for 2 SSD, because they are 1.8". Although my notebook is older I think there are new ultraportables that are similar.

You can't just generalize and say its no longer necessary for everyone. It depends completely on the laptop and drive they're trying to put in.

 

I find ODDs simply aren't as important as they once was, they are bulky, fragile, noisy and slow, these days I'd much rather use a external HDD or a couple of spare SD cards/USB drives to give files to ppl or store videos and such since its so much faster.
I'd replace an optical bay anyday, the only time I've needed the optical drive is either installing windows or ripping. I have a DVD drive on my desktop so theres my Ripping+transcoding needs so it makes sense to swap out the ODD for extra HDD capacity. If push comes to shove, I have an external $20 samsung ODD which I've used twice this year lol. I don't see the issue in having 2 SSDs, tbh the only reason I wouldn't do it is because of the cost, if you were nuts you could actually software RAID 0 both SSDs for insane boot times.

 

This is my personal opinion: if my laptop originally came with 2 HDD bays, I wouldn't need to change the ODD with OBHD caddy.

Others may argue, that it's better to have an SSD plus 2xHDD@RAID0 in a laptop (or 2xSSD@RAID0 + HDD, or 3xSSD@RAID0, or...), rather than an SSD + HDD + ODD...

I personally wouldn't need that, as I already have 2xHDD@RAID0 via eSATA (eSATA I unfortunately - it's still pretty darn fast for my needs though).

 

ODD's have quite frankly been outdated since the USB invention.
The only reason they remained in use is because of slow adoption from the consumer market and 'cost' the manufacturers go by.

As for me, I personally have little to no use for an ODD.
Mine is basically not being used 99% of the time... and the 1% that it IS active (which is maybe once in a year), is to basically burn some stuff for friends who are stuck on outdated computers and means of storage.

As for music... uhm... most of the stuff I listen to (except for a few things for my workout) has been in digital form on my HDD since the start. I have had an mp3 player with most of the stuff I listen since 2006 (which I used rarely) and most of the cell-phones from then were Mp3 capable.
I don't watch the latest movies really, nor TV (lost interest seeing how most of the stuff if pure garbage and not worth the time).

I install an OS via USB (much faster and reliable compared to a CD/DVD).

An ODD should have been an option a LONG time ago in external USB form (instead of integrated into the laptop)- it would have saved a lot of people from extra issues, and provided manufacturers with options for cooling or better overall performance.

 

ODD's haven't been outdated since USB, it's been since high speed internet has reached the masses AND USB storage has become inexpensive for larger size thumb drives, and that has only been in the last 5-6 years. IMHO the primary need for an ODD is blu-ray video. There are so many other options for storage that are better than ODD. Optical media is still dirt cheap though, however 4 or 8GB chips are getting cheap enough that spending $0.10 for a DVD vs $1 for a USB drive is really negligible. I'm sure a 4GB thumb drive on mass scale could be manufactured for about $1 each.

I am curious if Windows 8 will have a USB thumb drive option considering it is tailored to tablets and touchscreen devices that may not even have optical drive options.

 

I once got an usb conversion kit fora spare dvd-rw slim drive for like 10 bucks once i use it all the time, if my ODD wasn't IDE I'd totally have dropped in an SSD by now and converted the ODD to USB.

 

A lot of people now download their games from a service like Steam, where you don't need to put any CD in to play it.

As for movies and music, most people get their music from iTunes now, and movies can be downloaded for the most part, or watched on Netflix. Even stuff like Game of Thrones, which isn't available for download as far as I know (unless you want to torrent it), can still be watched on HBO Go. So yeah, some people just want the extra HD space.

 

My personal laptop for work and school does not have an optical optical and honestly I don't remember the last time I've needed one. Six or seven years ago I ripped my few CDs and now that music is on a media server at home. For movies my wife and I either stream from netflix or we stream from my server to the Samsung (Smart tv lol). The only actual disks we use are her Sims disks, which she plays on the iMac very seldomly, and Xbox 360 games. The Sims can easily be loaded from the hard drive, so the disks aren't necessary really.

Oh, we do have our wedding videos on DVDs, but they are also on the server.

One thing I don't miss about ODD are how noisy they are. When a client brings in a laptop to be fixed I'm shocked by how loud they can be. Many laptops also have the odd in the first slot for boot order in BIOS, which makes the drive spin up on boot. I'm so used to SSD whisper quiet

And as many people have already mentioned, if am optical disk drive is really needed, there are cheap external alternatives. They make external USB optical disk drives as well as sata to USB adapters/cases for your existing internal ODD. This solves that issue, and now you have access to those CDs/DVDs as well as have a handy bay for a 750gb/1tb mechanical drive or even another SSD to eventually transfer the contents of those disks to

For Christmas Santa is bringing me a 512gb SSD, and combined with my 360gb SSD this is plenty of space. At that time I'll move my 750gb HDD to an external enclosure and it will be used as data backup. Happy camper

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If you need an optical drive, you can get an external kit and use a tool like Daemon Tools as a virtual ODD. Just rip discs to your 2nd HDD and you can carry your whole collection with you.

 

Not all CD's or DVD's are that simple to rip. But yeah, that's what most people do or should do.

 

Is it possible to take an internal laptop DVD drive and somehow convert it to an external one, instead of having to buy a separate external ODD?

 

Of course, you can buy an enclosure.

 

Like this one: Amazon.com: USB2.0 Slim DVD / CD RW Burner External Enclosure Caddy Case with SATA Connetor For Laptop Notebook burner, White: Electronics

or this one: Amazon.com: USB2.0 Slim DVD / CD RW Burner External Enclosure Caddy Case with SATA Connetor For Laptop Notebook burner, Black: Electronics

 

That's what I did with mine. Put it inside an enclosure and use it for specific OD tasks as necessary.

 

I would imagine that each laptop's ODD has slightly different dimensions and that makes it tough to find matching enclosures.

 

Majority of laptops have standard 12.7mm ODDs, they all have the same dimensions. All that differs is the front plate, which can be changed.

That's why optical bay HDD caddys fit that majority. The OBHD caddys have the same dimensions as standard 12.7mm ODDs.

 

What would be great is if laptop manufacturers agreed to a swappable bay that is fast (like PCI-X fast) so you can put in a hdd/ssd, odd, DAC soundcard, or even a GPU. It should be swappable without screws or any tools. Then we wouldn't have to have these tradeoff discussions. But I doubt that will ever happen.

BTW, I rarely use my ODD that much but there was one time when I was on the road and we were given an instructional video we needed to watch and my laptop was the only one able to play it so it has its uses.

 

A multi use bay has been a topic of discussion for some time. Some manufacturers do make them swappable between ODD or battery or HDD/SSD tray. It definitely would be nice to have added cooling option.

 

The Lenovo Y400 and Y500 are going to have hot swapping for the drive bay, including the option to have a second GPU.

 

Also will have the option for an additional fan as well as the usual HDD/SDD bay.

Maybe they could also have an extra battery option too, but I haven't heard of that yet :/

 

What? Second GPU in the ODD bay?

 

That'd be pretty wild. They're going to have to have some beefy cooling systems

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You would need a PCI-X to take advantage of a modern GPU. Also, while the Lenovo has this option, unless it is an industry standard interface, not many companies would make parts for it. It would be great if laptop GPU's were upgradable this way.