Installing and Configuring an Optical Drive

External optical drives are "installed" simply by connecting them to a USB or FireWire port, as appropriate, and connecting power. Internal optical drives are 5.25" half-height devices, and require the same physical installation steps as any other 5.25" externally accessible drive. The following sections describe the steps required to install and configure an ATAPI (IDE) optical drive.

Choosing an interface configuration

The first installation decisions are whether to install the drive on the Primary or Secondary ATA interface and whether to configure the drive as the master or slave device. If you are upgrading an existing drive or replacing a failed drive, it might seem reasonable to configure the new drive the same ...

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