How to install a CD Writer

The rear end of your CD-RW drive should look similar to the image below.

It contains all the usual connectors such an IDE connector, a power connector, audio connector, and a place to set the jumpers. Set the jumpers so the drive is configured to run as a Master device. It is best to connect your CD-RW on separate IDE cable. This would avoid problems while you copy CD's on-the-fly. This means copying a source CD from a CD/DVD-ROM drive to a blank destination CD in your CD-RW drive without the source CD being copied to the hard disk first. Copying on-the-fly is less time consuming than copying the source CD to the hard disk first. However if you decide to connect your CD-RW drive and another device like a DVD-ROM on the same IDE cable, it would be fine providing you make an image of your source CD on a HDD first before copying to your blank CD. You may have problems such as "buffer under run" errors if you try to copy on-the-fly.

Place your CD-RW drive into a mounting slot as shown. Position the drive correctly and screw it onto the case.

Connect the IDE and the power cable to the drive. If you want to use the CD-RW drive for playing Audio CD's then you also need to connect an audio cable to the Audio-out socket of the drive. If you have a CD/DVD-ROM then the audio cable is usually connected that drive instead of the CD-RW, but there is no reason why you can't have both.

Finally the other end of the IDE cable should be connected to an IDE socket of the motherboard.