Optical drives never require a driver when used in any Windows os from Win95 up. Windows XP, Windows Vista, & Windows 7 all provide native support that allows an optical drive to read a data or music disk and to burn a cd-r disk. No support for playing dvd disks, avi or mpeg video files, or for burning cd-rw or dvd disks. For those tasks, compatible 3rd. party recording & dvd decoding software is required. All modern optical drives are plug and play in all Windows OS's beginning with Windows 95.
USB drives are just like any other interface, it is 100% plug and play in any Windows OS.