Now a days a CD-Rom drive is as important as any other part of the computer. You can't install very many programs; most versions of Microsoft Windows are on a CD. CD's are not only a great way of storing media, but have the potential to have massive capacity. 

Before going into types of CD-Rom drives, you should be clear on how a CD and CD drive works. Sometimes called laser discs, that is what they are, a laser, of red light, is shot at the disc, the light will reflect off the shiny surface, and bounce back in a certain time, this would determine whether what type of block the light bounced off of is. 


Whether it would be a 0 or 1 would determine what the CD contains. There are advancement is this technology that could bring the capacity from 650mb, the common storage level, to well over a gigabyte. The CD's will not get any bigger; that would defeat the purpose, but simple instead of using the 0 and 1 pieces of data, there would be a much larger selection, such as 0,1,2,3,4,5,6. Unfourtunetly, this would involve a new type of CD-Rom drive, the new drives would be able to read not only the new CD's but also the old ones, and visa versa.

Now to go to the CD-Rom drives its self. There are a few very reputable brands that have been known for excellent product, Sony and Creative. These two companies have exceptional products. The speed is also a very important factor. There is a strange thing going on now, all of the equipment is getting faster and faster, but the need for high-speed drives is not. 48x should be all that is necessary for running CD's, whether it would be a game or music. CD-Rom has the ability to rip music, so rip speed to consider if you are a music fanatic such as my self. High rip speed would enable you to take the music off of the CD very quickly and transfer it to your hard drive. This is DIFFERENT THEN NORMAL SPEED, this speed is separate. 

For some of us, there was never a time where your computer didn't have a CD-RW (or commonly called burner). This is a pricey option, you may choose to not install of these drives because of the cost. But, if you have the extra moola and want to spice up your system why not? A good speed for these drives would be in the range of 8x4x24. (8x write, 4x re-write, and 24x read). This would be a mid range drive. You may want something that has a 32x read speed to copy data faster from the drive if you are not constantly burning CD's. 


Once you have chosen a brand (not necessarily from the ones listed above), and model, then installation is next. Insert in to the drive bay, it will be the bay where you can remove a plastic piece and possibly remove a metal plate. Should not take much effort, the metal plate may take a little bit of twisting to get it out, but that is it.

Now screw the screws into the holes on the outside of the CD drive. There will be pre-drilled screws on the outside of the drive. If you can't see them, adjust the drive; it's probably on a slant or something. A little piece of personal advice, inserting drives and other things are very simple, use common sense to solve a problem, if it were impossible to build computers, they wouldn't have people like me doing it!! (Joking, I'm pretty good at this stuff!)


After this place your IDE and Sound cable into the back of the drive and attach them to the correct places on the motherboard. (NOTE: All of this should be done while your computer is off and unplugged, electrical currents HURT!) 


And VOILA there is your new CD drive, follow the necessary steps in windows for installing your new hardware and have fun!