Yes HDD are disc based tech, yet I've never heard them refered to as just a disc drive without the hard despite having a platter disc in them. While not being the end all be all, wikipedia has disk or disc drives listed as referring to purely optical media.

And I use them to access a plethora of media from old back ups/family pictures, DVDs/Blu-ray, backing up said DVD/Blu-ray to Plex if I like them that much I want them digitally, old games(my oldest still useable disc is my 1998 minted "GOTY" Diablo 1.) Also just never hurts to have the ability to burn a CD or DVD either, though mainly still get the use out of CD burning for cars without an aux.