Disks using optical techniques for recording and replay of material. These offer large storage capacities on a small area, the most common being the 5-1/4-inch compact disk, being removable and having rather slower data rates than fixed magnetic disks, but faster than floppies. Write Once, Read Many or "WORM" optical disks first appeared with 2 GB capacity on each side of a 12-inch platter, useful for archiving images. In 1989 the read/write magneto-optical (MO) disk was introduced which can be re-written around a million times. With its modest size, just 5-1/4-inches in diameter, the ISO standard cartridge can store 325 MB per side, offering low priced removable storage for over 700 TV pictures per disk. A variant on the technology is the phase change disk but this is not compatible with the ISO standard.

An uprated MO disk system introduced in 1994 has a capacity of 650 MB per side, 1.3 GB per disk. In 1996 a second doubling of capacity was introduced offering 2.6 GB on a removable disk. Besides the obvious advantages for storing TV pictures this is particularly useful where large format images are used, in print and in film for example.

The NEC DiskCam system uses optical disks for storage.