The present invention provides a method for reducing the amount of power consumed by an optical disk player. The method provides: recording at least a portion of the audio, video, or audio/video data from an optical disk onto the portable computer's hard disk while the optical disk is being played over the output device; turning the drive's spin motor off as soon as the data has been transferred to the hard disk; and then continuing to play the remaining un-played portion of the optical disk over the portable computer's speaker or other output device from the hard disk. The method further comprises recording in an index database a title of the optical disk and a title of the track written to the hard disk, and playing the data from the hard disk without re-reading the optical disk if the data has been previously written to the hard disk.