Help with fitting a CD writer

I've recently bought a new PC with a DVD writer. My old PC has a CD writer which I had fitted a few years ago. I thought it might be useful to take the CD writer out of my old PC and install it as a second drive on the new PC. The process appears to be quite easy from the reading up I've done, but as I have no experience of poking around in the innards of my PC, could anyone give me a step by step rundown, pointing out any possible pitfalls? I'm a bit confused over the master/ slave set up in particular.

thanks

 

OK don't worry we all had to start somewhere!

I'd set the dvd writer to master, should already be as it came with your pc set up, and look at the jumper settings on top of your writer.
Slide it in from the front, in most cases, screw it in, connect the molex and ide cables and it should automatically be detected as rom drives generally don't need drivers.

Hope this helps!

 

Actually, what you want to do is quite easy. Once the CD is installed, you'll notice that the ribbon cable coming from the DVD should have another 'plug-in' about 1\4 of the way from the DVD drive. Plug that into the CD writer and then plug in the 4-pin power cord and you're ready to go. As for the master\slave thing, that won't be a concern here. Your DVD will become the master and your CD the slave. Turn on your machine and your OS should automatically 'see' your CD drive. The only time I concern myself with the master\slave settings is when I deal with HDDs and then I set the jumpers to CS (cable select) and that avoids all that master\slave stuff.
There is one other thing that is optional and is not needed for the drive to function, but I'll mention it anyhow. There is a thin, usually gray colored wire, running from the back of your DVD recorder to your sound card. IF your sound card will accomdate another thin audio wire, you could always hook another wire from the back of your CD writer to the sound card also. Like I said, that really isn't needed, but at least I covered all the bases!!

 

Sorry Mcadam, it looks like we both posted at the same time!!

 

Waaaah? You posted 17 minutes later!!!!!
Very erm.....similar timing....

 

Thanks for that - I'll pluck up the courage and give it a go. Much obliged for your help.

 

Actually, it took me 20 minutes to type it!!!

 

Slow typer????

 

Well, yes I am pretty slow!! But that is due, in part, to me leaving part of my left arm over in S.E. Asia!! I may not be fast, but I do try to be accurate!!

 

Meh, fair comment....

 

I went ahead and did it this weekend and it was a complete success - thanks for your help - and indeed was an easy job. The only problem I had was that, on first bootup, the PC didn't recognise the drive, or the DVD writer that was originally installed. I took the cd writer back out and noticed that it was set as master, so changed it to slave, and everything worked perfectly.

 

well done shanky
its true we all started somewhere
welcome to chaos dude
good luck with futureprojects

 

Way to go Shankly!! Now you're ready for step two...building your own machine!!

 

See, all a piece of cake - something I could do with now