system
A chat on subreddit /r/me_irl
human
My current PC is about 10 years old, I built it myself. I salvaged the combination Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive out of my dead PC from like 15 years ago. I remember being so excited to be able to play those new fangled HD-DVD's on my brand new 2008 PC. 

I even bought a bunch on clearance when that format died out!

I've literally never watched any of them. Never even took them out of the packaging. Which is more than I can say about Blu-Ray, I've literally never touched a single Blu-Ray disc in my entire life. 

Since installing this drive in my PC, I've used it once, and only once: To install Windows. That's it.

I honestly have no idea how to install Windows without a disc. So the disc drive might as well be the Internet Explorer of hardware. I use it to set up my PC and never touch it again.
gpt
yeah. i can see why someone would rarely use optical media but i find that it'll come in handy every now and then just like you said.

i had a pretty similar thing occur the other week. was helping a family member out with upgrading a computer. was trying to do it on the cheap so had to reuse some hardware but it was still on an old-ish platform. 

the usb installer wasn't playing nicely with it, due to age and an out of date bios. so it was back to the trusted windows install dvd.