Gaming Laptop Has No DVD Drive

renegadefm

My friend has just bought a powerful gaming laptop for over £800 yet it has no DVD drive.
He didnt realize this when he bought it and only realized it after he got it home. He tried taking it back but PC World said because theres nothing technically wrong with it we cant accept it to be returned. 
The problem is that he has a massive game collection which are on discs,  and bought a gaming laptop with Christmas money and money he has saved in the hope to play them, hence why he chose a gaming laptop, you'd assume a DVD drive was essential.
So I did a little research and tried copying the discs painstakingly one by one to USB,  and computeractive magazine had an article on how to do this which I followed. 
But when I loaded the games on the laptop and tried clicking the icon it keeps asking for the disc,  even though each game seemed to load up fine.
There is obviously some information on the discs that doesnt transfer to USB. 
So how can I achieve this for him other than he will have to spend out more for an external DVD drive? 

forgotmyname

£15 for an external DVD drive, sorted and you only plug it in when needed. Whats wrong
with an external drive?  USB 3 speeds will copy an entire DVD to the laptop is a short period.
Faster than the game installs from DVD in the first place.  Some games will isist on the DVD
being present though, even if fully install onto the hard drive.

Why transfer to USB?  Install on the internal drive. It simply checks the DVD and runs from the
internal storage.

Most games are now downloaded, buying games on a media is less common. Steam and
similar platforms are more popular.

Had to build a desktop recently and that was one spec they required as a must, added a few £ to the
price. Now many towers available with a DVD drive bay and most cost more than the ones without.

If the DVD was that important it should have been the first thing they asked for.

renegadefm

@forgotmyname
Thanks for that.  
It just seems odd why a gaming laptop of all things doesnt come with built in DVD rom doesnt it?  Its not even that slim so odd why its left out.
Is this the future dvd less games? 

Doshwaster

I don't think I've seen a new laptop (gaming or otherwise) come with a DVD drive for several years. 
You can even spend £1800 on a gaming laptop at PC World and not get a DVD: https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/asus-rog-strix-g531gv-15-6-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i7-rtx-2060-1-tb-hdd-256-gb-ssd-10194898-pdt.html
As above, spend £15-20 to get an external drive.

renegadefm

Doshwaster said:

I don't think I've seen a new laptop (gaming or otherwise) come with a DVD drive for several years. 
You can even spend £1800 on a gaming laptop at PC World and not get a DVD: https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/asus-rog-strix-g531gv-15-6-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i7-rtx-2060-1-tb-hdd-256-gb-ssd-10194898-pdt.html
As above, spend £15-20 to get an external drive.

Shows how out of touch I am with new stuff.  Its a bit odd though for them to be absent in a gaming laptop. Lots of people got an expencive game collection on disc. I seen dvd drives in desktops today. 
Why have they become unfashionable in laptops? Anyone know? 

callum5

This Asus drive from amazon looks like a good choice with USB 3 support, includes two free M-Discs (good for long term data archives - rated to last 1,000 years), a year free of cloud storage and is well reviewed 
amazon.co.uk/dp/B01878ZQ8W/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_trftEbHFFD7TX

At a decent price of £26.99

renegadefm

callum5 said:

This Asus drive from amazon looks like a good choice with USB 3 support, includes two free M-Discs (good for long term data archives - rated to last 1,000 years), a year free of cloud storage and is well reviewed 
amazon.co.uk/dp/B01878ZQ8W/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_trftEbHFFD7TX

At a decent price of £26.99

That is an excellent drive and price. 
I'm still a bit puzzled why they are phased out in modern laptops though. Particularly gaming laptops.
Interesting they produce blank media to last a 1000 years when will we still have the drives to use them a 1000 years from now?

callum5

I can understand why they don’t put them in the thin and light laptops as they want to make them as portable as possible but in a gaming laptop where it is already fairly large I don’t see why they can’t just put one in (it could be a cost saving measure though). My personal laptop (it isn’t a gaming model) has a space for a disc drive but is unused and I couldn’t see any of the same model laptop with a disc drive at time of purchase. The industry may be trying to push consumers into a disc free era which could be the reason for no disc drive in the majority of laptops these days 

Neil_Jones

There are laptops available that have DVD drives in them.  They're a rare beast, yes, but they're available.

But anyway, external drives are available and do exactly the same job.

flashg67

renegadefm said:

callum5 said:

This Asus drive from amazon looks like a good choice with USB 3 support, includes two free M-Discs (good for long term data archives - rated to last 1,000 years), a year free of cloud storage and is well reviewed 
amazon.co.uk/dp/B01878ZQ8W/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_trftEbHFFD7TX

At a decent price of £26.99

That is an excellent drive and price. 
I'm still a bit puzzled why they are phased out in modern laptops though. Particularly gaming laptops.
Interesting they produce blank media to last a 1000 years when will we still have the drives to use them a 1000 years from now?

Even if we have still got them, who will have kept the receipt if your great, great, great (etc) grandchildren need to claim under the 1000 year guarantee?

renegadefm

Neil_Jones said:

But anyway, external drives are available and do exactly the same job.

True,  albeit a very cumbersome way to do things. Much more convenient when they are built in.
The way I look at it,  your paying close to a grand for a gaming laptop,  you'd expect the manufacturer to honour the customer with hundreds of pounds worth of gaming discs and install a disc drive so they can use them comfortably, and not have to carry around extra devices.