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-------------------------------------------------------------- This story was printed from ZDNet Australia. --------------------------------------------------------------
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Tech Guide: How to install a DVD or CD burner By Mitt Jones, Special to ZDNet February 23, 2004 URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/hardware/storage/soa/Tech-Guide-How-to-install-a-DVD-or-CD-burner/0,139023427,139116255,00.htm
 Looking to mix your own audio CDs, create home movies on DVD, or share slide shows? If so, a CD or DVD burner is your next must-have accessory, and installing one is easier than you might think. We show you how this simple upgrade will open a new world of creative possibilities.A disc burner easily qualifies as a must-have PC accessory these days, whether you're interested in mixing your own audio CDs, sharing videos or slide shows, or using CDs or DVDs simply to move or archive data. If your system's getting a little long in the tooth, chances are you have only a CD-ROM or CD-RW drive. Adding a second CD-RW drive or a DVD burner is a great way to get striking new capabilities without buying a new system. With multiple drives, your system will be able to burn directly from one disc to another, handy when copying CDs for safekeeping.
This Tech Guide will walk you through the steps of adding a CD or DVD burner to your current system. Depending on your PC's vintage, the steps may be slightly different. For our example, we added a Plextor PX-708A internal DVD burner to both a mature Dell Dimension 4500 and a brand-spanking-new iBuyPower Value Pro XP to cover both eventualities. Both already had CD-RW drives installed. The steps below pertain to Windows XP, but the procedure should be similar with other recent Windows versions.
Step 1: Check your system requirements Before you buy a drive, make sure your PC meets the minimum requirements, unless you're willing to accept performance that's slower than the drive's rated speed. To reap the benefit of our Plextor's 8X DVD+R speed, we needed at least an 800MHz Pentium III CPU, and Plextor suggests at least a 1.6GHz Pentium 4. Consider saving money by opting for a slower drive if your system doesn't meet the recommended requirements. Step 2: Document cable connections
Your system's boot drive probably occupies the master position on the primary ATA channel. Your optical drive may act as slave on the same channel or occupy the master position on the secondary ATA channel. If the hard drive and the optical drive share the primary channel, one ribbon cable will connect the two; otherwise you'll see separate ribbon cables running to each, as with both our test systems. Your new drive should work fine as the master or the slave on either channel. If your configuration allows, set the newer drive as master on the secondary ATA channel to ensure optimal performance. Tip:
Step 3: Set drive jumpers
The other, more reliable, alternative is to set one drive's jumper to master and the other's to slave. You'll have to remove the existing drive to check, and possibly change, its jumper setting, but the master/slave arrangement is a foolproof approach. The drive in our Dell system was set to cable select, while our iBuyPower system used master/slave settings. In both cases, we set the jumpers to master/slave. Tip: Step 4: Install the drive in a bay
Refer to your system's documentation if you have any doubt about how to install the new drive into a bay. If you'll be using a drive bay for the first time, you may have to remove panels on and behind the case's front face (the level of difficulty of this task depends on your case design). Most drives secure into a bay using four screws. In some PCs, the drive fits into a cage that you can slide out of the bay by pressing in tabs. In both of our test systems, the drives attached to metal cages via four screws. If possible, use the screws provided with your drive. You may have to remove both side panels to attach all of the screws. Tip:
Step 5: Attach the interface cable
Most ATA interface cables have a red stripe along one edge. Connect the cables so that this stripe aligns with pin 1 on the drive's connector, the side closest to the four-pin power connector. Most systems and ribbon cables are keyed to allow connection in only this orientation. Tip: Step 6: Attach the power cable
Tip: Step 7: Attach the audio cable Many older systems require an audio cable to connect your optical drive's four-pin analog output to an output on your sound card so that you can play audio CDs on your PC. This approach yields fine audio quality for most of us, but it's not ideal: PC optical drives typically don't contain hi-fi-quality digital-to-analog converters. Some sound cards and most current optical drives allow a digital connection between the two devices, but this connection is seldom used. Many newer systems do away with the audio cable altogether. Recent versions of Windows support audio-CD playback using digital audio extraction, which lets the PC read digital data directly from the drive and perform the necessary digital-to-analog conversion. The biggest drawback of digital audio-CD playback: If there's a headphone jack on the front of the optical drive, it won't work when you play a CD. On both of our test systems, which already used digital CD playback with no problems, we installed the new drive without an audio cable. If your current optical drive uses an analog cable and you want to add your new drive with the same type of connection, you may need to buy a Y connector; most sound cards allow only one analog input.
Step 8: Boot your system After checking the cable connections one last time, power up your system. To verify that Windows recognises the drive, go to My Computer and look for an icon for the new drive. If the icon doesn't appear, reboot and enter your PC's CMOS setup program, following the manufacturer's instructions. Make sure both ATA channels are enabled in the setup routine and that the master and slave positions are correct. Step 9: Configure Windows' settings
Tip: Windows XP includes a "lite" version of Roxio's Easy CD Creator that makes it easy to write files to disc, but most drives provide one or more software titles with larger feature sets, such as Roxio's Easy CD & DVD Creator 6.0. To install your drive's software, insert the disc into any optical drive on your system. If the setup routine doesn't start automatically, browse the disc and run setup.exe.
The right connections CD and DVD writers typically come with ATA ribbon cables, but you may be better off using the cable that's already installed in your system. Some drives, including the Plextor PX-708A that we used for this article, come with a 40-conductor cable that doesn't support cable select, instead of the slightly more expensive 80-conductor cable that does. Both 40-conductor and 80-conductor ATA cables use the same 40-pin connectors. The additional 40 wires in the 80-conductor cables, which alternate with the signal-carrying conductors, simply connect to ground. This significantly improves signal quality across the cable, which in turn allows ATA signaling to occur reliably at faster rates than with conventional 40-conductor cables. How do you spot an 80-conductor ATA cable? One sure way is to count the ridges on the cable. You may also identify a standard 80-conductor ATA cable by its color coding. The master-drive connector at one end of the cable is black, the slave-drive connector between the two ends is gray, and the blue connector attaches to the motherboard. One catch: When the connectors are in use, the visible portion of each is typically black, so you'll have to unplug a connector or two to see if an installed cable is color-coded. CD and DVD writers don't operate fast enough to require 80-conductor cables, but an 80-conductor cable may improve performance somewhat, and it certainly won't hurt. The 80-conductor cables are mandatory for hard drives using Ultra DMA modes 3 through 6, but optical drives typically use Ultra DMA mode 2 (33.3MB per second), at best. (A higher Ultra DMA mode means that a drive supports a faster transfer rate. The vast majority of hard drives sold today support mode 6.) If you wanted to attach a hard drive and your CD/DVD burner to the same channel, which isn't completely unlikely, you'd need an 80-conductor cable for the hard drive to operate faster than 33.3MB per second. The bottom line: If you're attaching only optical drives to the cable, don't waste time and money buying an 80-conductor cable. If your PC or new disc burner provides an 80-conductor cable, however, go ahead and use it. The Web abounds with information about installing and using CD and DVD burners. For more about ATA cables, connections, and cable select, click here; you'll find an excellent series of articles on these and other topics. FAQs worth checking out include Andy McFadden's CD-Recordable FAQ and Jim Taylor's DVD FAQ, which cover their topics with "everything you wanted to know" breadth. The DVD-R help site includes a wealth of resources, such as a well-trafficked forum and how-to guides on several aspects of creating DVDs. And for the official spin on the competing DVD media formats, check out the official sites of the DVD Forum and the DVD+RW Alliance. To learn more about Windows' digital audio extraction feature, take a look at this Microsoft knowledge base article. You'll also find an article on how to get the most from your CD burner here.
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