An optical disk is primarily used as a portable and secondary storage device. It can store more data than the previous generation of magnetic storage media, and has a relatively longer lifespan. Compact disks (CD), digital versatile/video disks (DVD) and Blu-ray disks are currently the most commonly used forms of optical disks. These disks are generally used to:

• Distribute software to customers
• Store large amounts of data such as music, images and videos
• Transfer data to different computers or devices
• Back up data from a local machine