You can just buy an internal DVD-ROM drive and install it in your pc. If you lack an IDE port on your motherboard you can use PCIe expansion cards. Power can be supplied by Molex.
Whenever I see a SATA optical drive that someone doesn't want, I grab it and tuck it away. Shit is rare now.
I'm sure I could go to a shop and just pick one up, but honestly, I don't have a reason to. Give me an opportunity to snag one for free and I will not pass it up.
Bro, IDE has been dead for YEARS now, I'd be shocked if there was an IDE connector on any consumer computer made in the last 10 years (Industrial stuff can get weird)
Most gaming pc cases now don't have any bay slots on the front panel. USB power buttons and audio plugs got moved to the top and all the slots for floppy and CD drives just vanished.
I've always wanted a good quality 3.5" external drive. I rarely have an internal disc drive (cd/dvd/BR) on any of my computers. A few years ago I had the need to pull some files off of a 3.5" floppy, I had to boot up an old Dell PE 2850 server that had a 3.5" drive on it to get the files off the drive. Luckily the copy of Windows server 2003 still booted, and the raid array was operational. It was like a miracle getting that stuff off that disk.
It was late at night and I couldn't wait until morning to go buy a USB 3.5" drive to get the data.
I work in IT and people question my sanity when I'm walking home with SCSI interfaces and corresponding SCSI tape drives. I even picked up a zip 100 usb drive at some point.
I never used it for it's intended purpose, but as soon as someone needs data off of some archive, on an outdated storage format, I become the MVP.