Recently, we've had some major problems with our current DVD/CD RW drive ("major problems", meaning it's toast), so we've decided to replace it. After looking around for a while, we found the Sony DRU-830, a vista compatible drive that does the job, to put it simpley (It's definately not the best out there, but it cost $60 and will probably last a good couple years). So, now that we have the new drive every thing is great. But it's still in the box.
Well, we had to come to this if we wanted a new drive, so we open the computer. First thing's first, we have to take out the old DVD drive, which is relatively easy , you just take out the power cable (the wire closest to you, that is conected to the drive) and then carefully pull out the IDE cable. Now that the drive is unpluged, you just need to slide it out. Most DVD/CD RW drives, and those similar, have little clip-like metal things, that you have to press in toward the DVD/CD RW drive as you pull it out, you will also need to screw these on to the new DVD/CD RW drive that you put in, which is relatively easy ; just take a normal flat-head screw driver, unscrew the two screws on the older drive, and remove the plastic and metal clips from the sides. Then secure the clips on the new DVD/CD RW drive, and screw them in, you'll be ready to go.
Interface
check what interface is available on your motherboard, our motherboard is the A8R32-MVP Deluxe. IDE conectors, 1394 conectors and serial ATA conectors. The IDE supports : Ultra DMA 133/100/66/33. The 1394 supports : 1394a.
The SATA supports : SATA up to SATA3. There's also USB support on the motherboard. The old plextor was a SATA drive, the old kenwood is an IDE, the new Sony driver is ATAPI (EIDE) compliant, you can find this info on the box. The motherboard we currently have supports the Sony drive. the motherboard has two different IDE conectors the primary and seccondary. When first opened up, the computer looked much like just a bunch of cables and wires, some odd tech rat's nest. I found the SATA wire (which I did'nt need) I also found a SATA power cable, which was not needed either and was taken out and I found an IDE cable that only had one conector on each end. Since i needed to have two drives installed, I had to either replace the old IDE cable with a new one that could connect to both drives and the motherboard at the same time. I also had to put in or find a new power cable.
Running the cables
runing the cables included picking the cable. The space for doing this was very tight, so we had to move one of the drives out of the way. Then, we had to pull the old IDE cable and place the new cable in the primary IDE socket, which to say the least, is a casse-couilles to do in tight quarters, and took several tries. The IDE cable connecter had a pin block, the IDE socket had a pin missing and a key slot. the one that is always there the cable has a pin1 line up the end of the conector with the end of the socket that had a "1" printed on the motherboard. The new IDE cable has one end with a long space and two ends that were close together so they can reach both drives. The power cable was too short even to reach the first drive, so we had to look around in the jumble of wires for another possible cable to use. We found anothe power cable pressed up around the bottom of the computer, so we used that.