can I swap dvd-rom drive for cd-rom?

[Ron Victoria]

I got a new software program for school but it requires a dvd drive. Can I swap the drives?

ron

[John Gould]

Sure You Can!
Just make sure you make note, is the drive coming out a Master or a slave. "jumper setting"
Set the new drive the same.

[Bill Ford]

Ron,
If you have room, you can install both...Bill

[Ron Victoria]

I got 3 for $25 on Craigs and one is a burner.

[Storm Rosson]

if you are using a sata interface for your drives, u can disregard the master/slave manual config ;-)ps: u can get new dvd burners of various brands (I prefer Samsung-TSST Corp, or Plextor) for 20-30$ new on Newegg.com

[Jack Stoner]

Most PC vendors, for quite a while, have used "Cable Select" rather than Master/Slave on PATA (IDE) drives. If that is what you have, look at the drive you are taking out and set the DVD drive the same. You will have to check what the old drive is actually set as the physical location of the different types is not the same location on all drives. e.g. Cable Select may be the 2nd slot in one drive and the 4th slot in another. There is usually a label on the drive that lists what slot is what.

The Device type jumper is normally located to the left of the IDE Ribbon I/O connector.

[Storm Rosson]

that kinda depends on your pc's bios. Most older boards with ide/pata interface and cheap/proprietary bios often couldn't even see the hdd if it was in cs position. And if u were running 2 devices on 1 ide line it was/is practically mandatory to set the jumpers to master or slave.

[Jack Stoner]

I had an old Compaq Presario that came with Win 98 and it used Cable Select. I've worked on later Compaq's and they too had cable select. I had a 2002 Gateway and it had cable select. I do a lot of PC support on the Dell users forum and Dell has used Cable select since at least 2001 (that I know of).

All the HP's I've worked on that use PATA used the Cable Select method.

[Storm Rosson]

Yer prolly ahead of me there Jack as I usually work on custom pc's that I build for clients. I usually just configure pata wwith hdd on primary master ide ch 1 and optical drive same only on ide ch 2 any additional drives get set as slaves guess in reality I haven't messed with cs much. The newer Dell's and my nephews HP, both core2 duo's don't even have any pata interface on the mobo. My brothers year old Dell core2 uses a relatively standard case that will take most any mATX board......gettin cheaper by the minute lol. Actually I think the move to standard footprint mobo's is a plus imo , Stormy

[Jack Stoner]

I'll modify that to "All Dell's that use PATA". Dell is finally producing more "ATX compatible" hardware than they used to. Newer systems are using "standard" components and everything is SATA.