Optical disc drives use a Laser beam to read/write data to/from the surface of an optical disc. Important PointsOptical disc drives:In computing, an optical disc drive (ODD) is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only read from certain discs, but recent drives can both read and record, also called burners or writers (since they physically burn the organic dye on write-once CD-R, DVD-R, and BD-R LTH discs). Compact discs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs are common types of optical media that can be read and recorded by such drives. An optical disk drive uses a laser beam to read the data from the disk as it is spinning. It distinguishes between the pits and lands based on how the light reflects off the recording material. The drive uses the differences in reflectivity to determine the 0 and 1 bits that represent the data. Additional InformationMagnetic beam: a region around a magnetic material or a moving electric charge within which the force of magnetism acts. Radio signal: a radio wave used to transmit and receive messages. A radio wave - an electromagnetic wave with a wavelength between 0. 5 cm to 30,000 m. Microwave signal: Microwave is a form of high-frequency radio signal (operating at thousands of MHz) in which the signal is not broadcast but is transmitted in a straight line through the air.