I have bought NEC DVD/RW ND-4570A unit back in the day (and MFG date is Jan 2006). Somewhere between 2014 and 2018 I needed to read a CD/R, so I plugged it in

I have bought NEC DVD/RW ND-4570A unit back in the day (and MFG date is Jan 2006). Somewhere between 2014 and 2018 I needed to read a CD/R, so I plugged it in and... nothing. I tested other discs, including factory made ones but looks like optics are dead in it. Sure, that time I could read the CD on ThinkPad X301 I had lying around, and I think I used it again circa 2020, but it still has a chance of just dying and then I wouldn't be able to read any of my not so big but still a collection of CDs/DVDs. Sometimes I fancy myself buying a USB DVD/BD drive... but just like I need to search the whole apartment to find that X301 (I have no idea where it is now again) I would not only need to find that drive (and it is even easier to lose it than a 13" laptop) but it can just die like my NEC one. So if you reaaly need some data, not only you should use appropriate media, you should have the means to read it back and that means should be redundant. Same applies to LTO, because while you still can find anything since LTO3 on eBay, there is no guarantee what it would work at all, because the drives are quite finicky and have a limited life-span in tearms of read/write cycles.