>> His reasons for not buying a new one are not technically valid, and upgrading the
>> disk on an 11 year old laptop is a waste of time.
>>
...bit of a sweeping statement, that.
If he's happy with its current functionality and performance, then an investment of not much more than the USB Optical Drive you highlight could recover the status quo.
With the usual caveats of the practicalities of replacement, I'd certainly consider it (and try clone, and if it failed, re-image).
Not everyone can, or would want to, spend the extra £300 or so for a new laptop to accessorise the external optical drive (though there's little doubt that that outlay should provide a performance boost).
For anything but irregular use, external optical drives are the spawn of the devil (yes, I have one).
==
I've just fixed a friend's now ageing Lenovo laptop. It was entirely screwed for performance, with the processor unwilling or unable to get off the first speed step (at around 1/8th design speed) and disk running at 100% for 15-30 minutes on start-up. I managed to get round the first issue using "Throttlestop", but what caused it I don't know. The disk issue I couldn't fix (Though I suspect it was repeatedly trying to install failed Windows Updates, failing again, and throwing no error messages).
It was thus re-imaged at no cost.........BUT
It had both a broken bottom case, and a battery that was down to 40% of its original max capacity. I offered to fix both (since battery replacement requires case dismantling anyway) and was able to source parts for just over £50. She chose to go ahead, and now has a "pristine" machine which, though not leading edge, does everything she needs, should last quite a bit longer, and at a cost of maybe £250-£300 of precious savings less than a new one. It has a DVD drive as well ;-).
Correct result all round, I think.
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Cloning laptop hard disk new