I suspect the internals of the optical drives are only made by a few manufacturers, whilst there are thousands of brands on amazon the difference will largely be styling/branding. I would just buy the cheapest and treat as disposable but LG is a solid brand.
Hard drives are so cheap on a per gig basis that it rarely makes sense to recycle old hard drives.
Depending on how critical the data is, you may benefit from some sort of protection against data corruption. It doesn't matter if your film loses a frame, but you will care if some less resilient document won't open as it's corrupted.
I suspect the internals of the optical drives are only made by a few manufacturers, whilst there are thousands of brands on amazon the difference will largely be styling/branding. I would just buy the cheapest and treat as disposable but LG is a solid brand.
Hard drives are so cheap on a per gig basis that it rarely makes sense to recycle old hard drives.
As for ripping cds - what is this, the 90s 😄