Installing DVD-RW drive

Hi,


My DVD drive has buggered up so I need to replace it with a spare.. I know how to insert the drive into the tower and connect all cables, but is there a proccess i go through once my comptuer is running to activate or get the drive to run?

Dean
 
If your replacing a optical drive like for like then there should be nothing further to do.

The computer will already be set up using the old drive, so your just replacing it with the new one.
 
If the optical drive is IDE, don't forget to set the jumper on the back of the new drive to the same setting as the old drive (master, slave or cl). If the drive is SATA, this doesn't apply.
 
Open up your case, and then look for one of the following cables.

IDE uses a ribbon cable to connect the drive to the motherboard. It is very thin and wide, like this:

ide-ribbon.jpg


A SATA drive uses a cable like below:

sata18ra1-l.gif


If you have spare SATA ports on your motherboard, you could upgrade to a SATA optical drive if you currently use a IDE one with the ribbon cable. If you are upgrading to SATA, make sure your power supply has a spare SATA power connector, or order up a Molex-to-SATA power connector to connect it using an existing Molex connector as used by the IDE drives.

SATA ports on a motherboard (blueish in the picture) look like below.

46b794be3c.jpg


Though the colours can vary, so just make sure they look physically the same.
 
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