Optical Drives

 

 

Hello and welcome back to Tomexplace.

 

As I promised before for those who are reading my posts that I will make a new post every week, here is another.

In this post, I will write about the Optical Drives.

  

So what's  Optical Drive?

An Optical drive is that type of drive that reads and writes data into optical discs, the discs you put into your computer, like CD, DVD, Blu-Ray.

This drive allows user to write, edit and delete data from these discs. When you put a CD into your computer, the Optical Drive reads it. 

Optical Drive is also known as the Optical Disk Drive (ODD).

You can find optical drives not only in computer's, optical drives are also included in things like, Playstation, xbox, car audio systems, DvD players, everywhere where the CD's are necessary.

 

 Optical Drives are dying

Optical drives have been important part of the computers for a long time, but now they are slowly dying, because you can download almost everything from the internet, and CD's are getting replaced with the Flash Drives. Nowadays some laptops are manufactured without built-in Optical Drives.

In my opinion, I believe, that soon we wont use CD's and DvD's anymore, the flash Drives are already strating to replace Optical Drives and soon we will forget about them.

 

So what's the point of making this post?

 

You may ask, Then whats the point of writing about Optical Drives if they are dying? What's the point of even knowing about them?

Well, we are still using them, they are still in the market, and there are computer's in the market with built-in Optical Drives. There still is game consoles and car audio systems which are using optical drives.


We somethimes need to acces older media, and because the CD's and DVD's are read only, it can be good archival format. Some programs still require them for emergency boot tools.

 

More about the Optical Drives

    

On desktop computers optical drive is in the size of a small book. On the front of the drive you can find small open / close button that ejects CD, or opens the slot for you so you can put the CD into your computer. 

 

The sides of the optical drive have pre-drilled, threaded holes for easy mounting in the 5.25 inch drive bay, in the computer case. The optical drive is mounted so the end with the connections faces inside the computer and the end with the drive bay faces outside. The back of the optical drive contains a slot for a cable that connects to the motherboard.

 

For laptops it's smaller, but the functions are the same.

How the Optical Drive works?

Basically, when you insert the disc into the drive, the motor spins the disc really fast, while the laser reads the data from the disc. When you put the disc into the drive you can hear loud noise, its because the drive is spining the disc.

Optical Drive uses a laser to read data from the disc and write data to disc. A laser means an electromagnetic wave with specific wavelength. Different types of discs require different wavelengths. 

There are three main components of the optical drive, a laser, leans, and a photodiode.

The laser reads and writes data to disc, 

leans guides the laser across the disc's surface, 

photodiode detects the reflection light from the disc.

For different types of discs laser uses different wavelenghts. A CD player uses wavelenght of 780 nanometers (nm), this is in the infrared light range. 

DvD players uses wavelenghts of 650 nm range. 

Blu-Ray players use a much lower wavelength something like 450nm.

  

Read Only Media (ROM)

When you buy a new CD or DvD disc, you may see that there is a label on the disc cover, like, DvD-RW, DvD-ROM, DvD-Rs or CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-Rs. It's because not all the discs are manufactured for the same purposes.

Two letters at the end can describe what kind of disc it is and how you can use it. Like, RW means rewriteable, ROM means read only media, Rs means recordable. 

So if you have a common sense, you can understand that the read only media (ROM) means that the disc is only readable, and you can't record anything to it. 

Usually these are the types of discs that software is written on by manufacturer, also original movie, games and music discs.

The manufacturer will create the disc by embedding pits called grooves, on the disc’s surface. 

When you insert the disc into the optical drive, a reading laser shines on the disc. The light is reflected and detected by the photodiode which then translates the data into a form that the computer can understand and display.

 (R) discs

Optical Drive can also record media to discs, not only read them, for this you need a specific recordable discs like CD-Rs, DvD-Rs, BD-Rs. 

BD stands for Blu-Ray discs, I dont know why they are called BD, it could be better if they would be called BR, that would make more sense, but it's how it is BD will always stand for Blu-Ray.

 

(R) disc means, that the disc is manufactured only for recording. When you buy it, it's empty, there is no data on it. For writing files into disc you will need Optical Drive that's capable for recording. Well, it's not that much important anymore, nowadays every optical drive can record.

Anyways, if you aren't sure about your ODD, then check the cover of your optical drive, you can see the label on your computer's optical drive cover, the place where you put a CD's into your computer.  

In picture bellow you can see the labels on optical drive. This drive supports BD, its DvD and CD rewriteable, basically it can do anything you will ever need.
 

So, to write data into the disc you need an optical drive that's capable for recording, DvD-Rs, CD-Rs or BD-Rs type of disc and a software to do the work for you. 
The most popular is called Nero, but there are many kind of CD recording softwares. Usually they are built-in your operating system, if not, you can just download some of them for free.



When you write files into the disc, a laser melts organic dyes on the disc's surface, and embeds grooves into the surface. Then, when the data is recorded on the disc, the disc will function like ROM disc, it will become Read Only Media. You wont be able to delete anything from the disc, its recorded to be there for ever.

RW

RW stands for rewriteable, it means that you can rewrite files on the disc over and over. For example, you have a DvD-RW disc and there's a movie recorded into the disc. You can download another movie and record it to the same disc.

You wont be able to watch the old movie from this disc, but you will be able to watch the new movie you just recorded. You can do this over and over, how many times you wish.

Rewriteable discs are aviable for CD-RW, DvD-rw, BD-RW. These discs are different than R and ROM. The surface of these discs are made of a special crystalline alloy that enables data to be written on its surface over and over.

Data is embedded into the disc on grooves that reflect the laser differently.

Then, the photodiaode is able to distinguish between different reflections and can display the correct information.

About the discs

You may ask, why there is three variations of discs like CD, DvD, BD?

There are many reasons for that but basically, they all work in the same way. the main difference is capacity of how much you can record.

The first and the oldest one is CD - Compact Disc. The CD has the lowest capacity of 700 MB and they are the cheapest ones.

The next one is DvD or Digital Versatile Disc, it can hold 4.7GB. Because of their higher capacity they are ideal for storing movies and data backup.

The largest one is Blu-Ray, it can hold 25 GB.

 

Dual Layer

Dual layer is double sided DVD and it can apply only to BD and DVD.

Dual layer is more commonly called Double Layer. Dual layer technology provides two individual recordable layers on a single sided DVD or BD disc. The disc has two layers, basically, it doubles the discs memory.

For example, The simple DVD disc can have 4.7 GB free space, the DVD with double layer can have it doubled, so it means DVD with double layer can have 8.54 GB. Same with BD, single layer BD contains 25 GB but in double layer, 50 GB of memory. 

To take advantage of dual layer technology when recording DVDs, you must use a dual layer enabled DVD burner and dual layer DVD media. 

DL will always stand for dual layer, double layer. 

Dual layer discs are DVD+R DL or BD+R DL. Double layer discs are recordable only (R DL).

Thats it, the basic concepts of the optical drives and discs.

Final thoughts

This post won't be usefull in the near future, but still we are using the optical drives, you can still buy movies, games, music into CD's.


In my opinion, in like 5 or 10 years we wont use this technology anymore. Right now the optical drives aren't important as much as 5 years ago, the flashdrives are replacing them, soon flashdrives will take over discs.


Even now you don't really need to use them as much as before, you can survive without them, its old technology. But it's good to know about the thing right now, because we are still using it.


There's a saying "The old things are the gold things"
I will make another post about the flashdrives in the future.




Ight, thanks all for reading, if there is anyone or not, lol, not giving a damn about it haha! If there is someone, follow me or check back later, there will be more posts coming soon. Regards "Tomex".

BIOS

Hello to everyone

 

If there is anyone who are reading my posts, lol, you may have noticed, that I have been inactive. The reason is, I had alot of work to do in past month. I thought that I will be inactive for one week but it turned out for longer time, lots of plans, works changed so I really didn't had time for blogging. But now I am back, and in this post I will writte about BIOS.

BIOS

BIOS - Basic Input/Output System is a lowest operating system in computer. It is a firmware program that turns on the computer. Firmware is a data that is stored on computer, or other hardware device's read-only memory. It provides instruction on how that device should operate.

BIOS controlls the computer from the start up untill the operating system takes over, also, BIOS is an interface and it can be used to change the computer's settings.

Most people dont even need to know about BIOS, but it can be helpful to know what BIOS is.

 

  MORE ABOUT BIOS

 

The BIOS has a number of different roles, but it's main role is to turn on the computer.

Processor is using BIOS to get computer started up after you turn it on, the processor accesses the BIOS even before the operating system is loaded.

When you turn on your computer, the BIOS is checking hardware such as video cards, hard drive, keyboard, mouse and printer to make sure that everything is working. The hardware check is called Power On Self Test (POST), then it loads the operating system into your random acces memory - RAM.

BIOS is very useful tool to determine what kind of hardware you have installed on your computer.
When you turn on your computer, the first thing you will see is that the BIOS displays text describing things like, the amount of memory installed in your computer, the type of hard disk, processor and so on. It's shown on the first display screen you will see when you turn on your computer. Something like pictures bellow.

 

 

CONFIGURATIONS

You can use BIOS to configure your computer's settings, such as system date and time, boot sequence, configurations for hard drives, cd rom, power management, security etc. It can be dangerous to configure BIOS settings if you dont know what you are doing, you can completely demolish your computer. For example, the components of computer have limitations and setting the wrong values can cause a fail, somethimes even burn down your computer. For example, asking the processor to work at very high frequency can make it overheat. If you dont know what you are doing, stay away from BIOS interface.

When you turn on the computer, you will see first screen offering for you to pres some buttons to enter BIOS settup. Most computers will ask you to press f1, f2, DEL, ESC, Ctrl-Esc, or Ctrl-Alt-Esc to enter BIOS settings. 

Some computers are turning on really fast, so fast that you wont have time to find out wich button to press for entering BIOS. It may be funny, but when I deal with fast booting computers, I just run my palm across the keyboard when I see the first screen when computer is booting. It may not work at first time, but do it untill you will see something like pictures bellow lol. 

 

That's the BIOS interface where you can configure your computers settings.

In this interface you will see;

Security - you can set up a password for your computer,

Drive Configuration - Configure hard drives, CD-ROM drives,

Mouse/Keyboard - settings for mouse and keyboard, also auto detect mouse,

Plug and Play - auto detecting  connected devices, always should be on "YES",

Power management - settings for power,

system time and date - sets the system time and date,

Boot sequence - configure what BIOS is starting up, for example, windows normally loads up the operating system, you can choose to not load the operating system, you can load the CD, or flash drive instead.

Settings for processor and more.

The BIOS itself can't be just a program installed on your hard drive because it starts up the hard drive. since BIOS is available before the computer boots up, it can't live in the RAM because memory from the RAM is lost when the computer is turned off. So it has it's own memory where to keep all your computer's basic settings independently if the computer is turned on or off.

Computer's configuration is stored in a special memory called configuration memory. This memory is different than RAM memory.

The BIOS memory is a chip that can be located on the motherboard. It's a chip with pins on it's sides, I've got some picture examples bellow.

 

 

This memory needs to be stored even when the computer is turned off. To keep your settings, for this purpose the BIOS memory is powered by a small battery. you will find the battery near BIOS chip.

 

Also, because of this battery you will always see the correct date and time when you turn on the computer.

The CMOS settings is always saved if your computer is turned on or off, because of this battery.
 

The term CMOS stands for Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor, representing the technological process used to make this memory chip. 

If the battery is dead, some computers will use standart built-in settings instead of yours.
somethimes, you will see error messages like CMOS battery fail, CMOS Read Error or CMOS Checksum Error when you turn on the computer. You may also see more cryptic error messages, like New CPU Installed, the motherboard can’t remember that the CPU was installed previously, so it thinks it’s new every time you boot your computer.

If you will pull out the battery from it's socket, all the BIOS settings will be set back to it's defaults.
It can be usefull to pull out the battery and plug it back in for troubleshooting when you cant start up your computer.

Also if the BIOS has a password and you cant get in BIOS, unplugging the battery and then pluging it back will remove the BIOS password.

Also you can resset the BIOS settings in BIOS settings (CMOS settings) in section Clear CMOS” or “Reset to Defaults.”

UPDATING THE BIOS

Updating BIOS or more correctly flashing the BIOS. 

You dont have to update BIOS, it is in really rare cases nowadays it's not that much important it reffers more to old computers, some older BIOS chips may not accommodate new hardware devices.

BIOS updates are released for supporting new hardware like a new CPU or graphics card. If you need this new hardware on old computer then it’s probably worth taking the risk to install it. If not, then you should simply stick with your current BIOS because the new BIOS won’t make any difference and could actually cause more problems.

Anyways, if you know that you have to update your bios, you must know your current BIOS version. The easiest way to find your BIOS version is to open the System Information app in Windows, just type msinfo32 into the search bar, and click System Summary.

Then check your PC/motherboard manufacturer's Website for BIOS updates and search for your BIOS update, you must find the correct update for your BIOS. If You will try to install the wrong one, you will demolish your computer.

Now you know your BIOS version, you have downloaded the BIOS and you are ready to update it.

It's easy to update most newer computer's, simply, open the exe file, quit all open programs and wait for update to finish, then restart the computer. If your computer will shut down in the middle of update, then your computer wont start up, so make sure that you have full laptop battery or if you are using a desktop that you have UPS, Check my post about the power supplys and UPS if you dont know what UPS is.

Older computers will require the bootable disc to update the BIOS. You may still be able to download an app that configures a USB thumb drive, blank CD/DVD, or even a floppy disk so that you can boot off of it to update the BIOS, or an ISO image file that can be used in your disc-burning app of choice.

PROBLEMS

The symptoms of a BIOS crash will usually show up during POST. You may see strange error messages or hardware may not be recognized properly. If the computer turns on but doesn't boot any further, you may have a BIOS problem.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I was so busy in this month that I didn't have time to make this post, alot of plans changed, but now I will make new posts more often, because I have time for blogging now. There will be atleast one post per week, that's a minimum, I have alot of things to writte about. So if you are reading my blogs, I promise that there will be alot more upcoming stuff.