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Make sure it has a driver installation disk (almost all retail units do). You
will need to get this drive working so that you can install the operating
system. These drives are very inexpensive now, get a fast one: 40X or faster.
Make sure it is ATAPI compatible IDE. Some drives look like IDE drives, although
they really use a proprietary interface, such as that used on some older
Creative multimedia kits. If you're buying new, you won't find this in the
stores anymore, so don't worry. If you want more than a simple CD-ROM, get
yourself a DVD player. These drives are not much more than a regular CD-ROM and
are backward-compatible with CD-ROMS, so they serve all purposes. Then, with a
good DVD software player like PowerDVD or WinDVD you can watch movies or use DVD
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DVD ROM is an advanced format of read-only
compact disc. It can store up to 17 GB of data, that's good enough to store a
full-length movie. One of the best features of DVD ROM drives is that they are
backward compatible with CD ROMs. This means that DVD ROM players can play old
CD ROMs, CD-I disks, and video CDs, as well as new DVD-ROMs.
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CD RW Drive
Until some time ago, you had CD ROM drives that were only capable of reading
CDs. That means the data once stored could not be changed or erased by the CD
ROM drive. This limitation is now overcome by CD RW disk drives. RW in CD RW
Disk Drive stands for Rewritable. With this technology the rewritable CDs can be
treated just like a floppy disk or a hard disk, and data can be written once, or
over and over again depending upon the kind of CD-Recordable media used.
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Combo Drive
A combo drive is a combination of CD RW Drive and DVD ROM Drive. What more can
one ask for? Well, with a Combo drive you can read huge amounts of data on DVDs
or enjoy movies. You can also access data from CDs and even rewrite on them
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