4 ms·

I don't actually see an explanation for why people moving from Windows 10 to 11 need to purchase new optical drives. Why couldn't they use either the same PC as

I don't actually see an explanation for why people moving from Windows 10 to 11 need to purchase new optical drives. Why couldn't they use either the same PC as before or, if using a new computer, use the same optical drive as before? Am I missing something obvious?

mberlove 1y ago
Agreed, from the article, there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation. Just two largely unrelated trends.
- fuzzfactor 1y ago
  Hasn't the ISO to install W11 now gotten too large to be burned to the biggest DVD? Could be a small number of experienced users, a few thousand in every city, who have always installed Windows from optical disk. Reliably and simply using the ISO as intended for it's primary purpose of being burned to optical disk. Moving from CDROM to DVD to large DVD would have been the rarely-triggered optical-drive upgrading cycle driven by Windows bloat alone. Looks like Blu-rays would be the only thing big enough now.
  - nickphx 1y ago
    I would think most would reach for a solid state USB drive, no? Far cheaper and infinitely reusable.
  - giobox 1y ago
    > Hasn't the ISO to install W11 now gotten too large to be burned to the biggest DVD? No. The Windows 11 media creation tool still officially supports creating a DVD installer from ISO image for Windows 11 (including the latest 25H2 release), alongside USB drives etc. The requirements for the DVD version are still the same 8gb of space it has been for a while. As of today, the ISO is 7.2GB. Virtually everyone uses a bootable USB thumbdrive or similar today though, and page you download the ISO from heavily encourages this, and is trivial to make with the Installation Media tool Microsoft give you. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11
    - fuzzfactor 1y ago
      You are right. That wouldn't require a Blu-ray. The ISO expands quite a bit after it is installed to your SSD. Maybe they are backing up their whole systems to the Blu-rays? Or have big movie collections which some comments indicated was expected. I've used USB for a while, don't think I've even used a DVD to install Windows. Did use them to back up years ago, but now a HDD for that.
dblohm7 1y ago
> Why couldn't they use either the same PC as before Windows 11 requires that the machine have a TPM.
- garciansmith 1y ago
  But the drives can be reused, either moved to a new desktop if internal, or just plugged into the new computer if external. Unless older drives themselves don't work with Windows 11?
  - 486sx33 1y ago
    [dead]

mberlove 1y ago

Agreed, from the article, there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation. Just two largely unrelated trends.

fuzzfactor 1y ago
Hasn't the ISO to install W11 now gotten too large to be burned to the biggest DVD? Could be a small number of experienced users, a few thousand in every city, who have always installed Windows from optical disk. Reliably and simply using the ISO as intended for it's primary purpose of being burned to optical disk. Moving from CDROM to DVD to large DVD would have been the rarely-triggered optical-drive upgrading cycle driven by Windows bloat alone. Looks like Blu-rays would be the only thing big enough now.
- nickphx 1y ago
  I would think most would reach for a solid state USB drive, no? Far cheaper and infinitely reusable.
- giobox 1y ago
  > Hasn't the ISO to install W11 now gotten too large to be burned to the biggest DVD? No. The Windows 11 media creation tool still officially supports creating a DVD installer from ISO image for Windows 11 (including the latest 25H2 release), alongside USB drives etc. The requirements for the DVD version are still the same 8gb of space it has been for a while. As of today, the ISO is 7.2GB. Virtually everyone uses a bootable USB thumbdrive or similar today though, and page you download the ISO from heavily encourages this, and is trivial to make with the Installation Media tool Microsoft give you. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11
  - fuzzfactor 1y ago
    You are right. That wouldn't require a Blu-ray. The ISO expands quite a bit after it is installed to your SSD. Maybe they are backing up their whole systems to the Blu-rays? Or have big movie collections which some comments indicated was expected. I've used USB for a while, don't think I've even used a DVD to install Windows. Did use them to back up years ago, but now a HDD for that.

dblohm7 1y ago

> Why couldn't they use either the same PC as before Windows 11 requires that the machine have a TPM.

garciansmith 1y ago
But the drives can be reused, either moved to a new desktop if internal, or just plugged into the new computer if external. Unless older drives themselves don't work with Windows 11?
- 486sx33 1y ago
  [dead]