Yeah I didn't either, seemed silly. Re-writing was so much slower too than just straight burning on a CD-R. I still have a bunch in my basement that I may never use up from my last purchase probably nearly a decade ago, lol. I have DVD-R's down there too that I KNOW will never see the light of day, should probably find a new home for them.
They're still useful, someone local may want them for a free pickup. I still keep a spindle of both, for when I'm restoring older laptops and PCs. For drivers and software.
I should drop them for free somewhere probably and see if someone does. When working with computers I just keep a stash of cheap flash drives around. Much easier than burning a CD anyways since new laptops don't usually have CD drives anymore (mine doesn't though I have a USB one around here somewhere).
Yep, I rebuilt an old Pentium III laptop a few weeks ago. The only way to get data onto it was via the 24x CD-ROM drive it has, or by taking the hard drive out of it and mounting it in another computer. I had some CD-Rs and a USB cd burner laying around, so I dusted it off and burned a copy of Windows 98 SE and used it to install the OS on that machine.
Rewritable DVDs, though? Burn a movie you didn’t care about, watch it, know you never want to see it again, burn another movie as if the previous abomination had ever burdened your media…
The little DVD burner <> DVD player pipeline these youths know of not.
It must be the plastic housing that did it. I once saw a CD drive which needed the CDs to be in a plastic shell as well - it looked something like a normal CD case but with a floppy-like sliding cover on the top. Immediately made CDs feel 5x more cool