>I did buy an external DVD-ROM drive that plugs in via USB3 a while back as a "just in case" measure. Ended up being a tad more useful than I'd originally expected. Some of the computers at the office have developed problems with the optical drives (a few have trouble reading discs reliably, one laptop occasionally doesn't recognize it has an optical drive, and the all-in-one* system stopped recognizing the drive altogether). Periodically I image the drives on the computers -- which entails booting from a CD-ROM with the imaging software.

Why DVD? At the time I was reinstalling stuff and switching to linux (also when I got a little Acer laptop for bedroom reading, from which I removed W10 the first day), I kept booting from a flash drive. Faster, easier and more space than a DVD, and doesn't have a mechanism which can get dirty, stuck etc.

That being said, I still have about 40 blank writable CDs. Because I bought an old van from 2001 which plays mp3 CDs :). It's french. Mind you, I couldn't find a mp3 disk player in the US until 2003, and for the car I never (i.e. until 2010) saw one, allegedly the technology wasn't ripe yet. Yet the French were serially putting them into their vans in 2001.