Since the introduction of the first compact discs, there wasn’t any storage device so practical and widespread, with many purposes. Compact discs almost immediately replaced the “good old” 3.5” floppy drives, which are still installed in many computer systems today, but no one really uses them anymore.
Floppy discs were practically accidents waiting to happen. The drives themselves were very reliable, but the thin and fragile magnetic discs (basically round audio tapes) were very primitive and unreliable.

The discs were (talking in past tense, because it’s obsolete technology) reasonably well designed, compared to the previous 5.25” solutions.

3.5” floppy discs had one significant advantage over the big floppy discs: the little door cover that opens and closes only inside the floppy drive (although many people accidentally opened them while handling or transport). This was the most floppy discs had to offer, that’s why improved designs were never mass-marketed like the classic 1.44MB version.
Compact discs have set a standard for what we expect from manufacturers. We’re all used to the 12 cm (and 8cm) diameter discs, and it seems that this is the optimal size for optical storage, because bigger optical discs didn’t catch on. This has something to do with desktop case size that can’t house bigger drive units. Imagine a computer case twice as wide as today’s desktop cases, that are already 40 cm x 40 cm x 15cm. It would look almost like a perfect cube because of the large optical drive.
To make a long story short, later DVDs came along with almost 7 times the capacity but the same physical size, and now they are developing bigger and faster Blu-ray burners and players as the main accessories for storing video, audio and all kinds of data.

Sony has always been present in optical drive manufacturing, although some of their drives were re-branded Lite-on and other OEM drives. I had the pleasure of buying a Sony (Lite-on) DVD burner soon after it was released. I chose the cheapest model, which had a $150 price tag and could burn at 4x speed … well sort of … I always used high quality TDK discs, but this DVD burner couldn’t write more than 3-4 disc one after the other. It simply overheated and made very poor quality discs until I let it to cool down at least 30 minutes. I was very happy when it finally broke under warranty, but sadly I later received a 8X Sony DVD burner that was even worse, it kept ruining discs randomly and the firm that sold it to me wouldn’t change it while it was still functioning. To make a long story short, I finally bought an 8X LG burner for approximately $55 one year later and never had problems with writers again, because the technology was significantly improved.
A few years ago Sony entered a partnership with NEC and now they make optical drives together under the name of Optiarc. I have used 18X Optiarc DVD burners for a few years and was very satisfied with burning capabilities, but they all died after 500 discs or so. It will be interesting to see how many discs can be burnt with the new 12X Blu-ray burner BWU-500S, which writes on 25GB and 50GB (dual layer) Blu-ray discs at surprisingly high speeds, while supporting DVD and CD burning too.
The other computer accessory launched was the external Sony BDX-S500U Blu-Ray burner .

It has basically the same specifications except for the maximum reading and writing speeds. These are limited by the interface used (USB 2.0) and maybe other factors too.
Unfortunately this is still new technology and in my opinion these drives shouldn’t be bought yet, because they are very expensive (the discs too) compared to single layer or dual layer DVDs that are much cheaper ($/GB).




























