Build The Ultimate Custom PC (2005)

Cable Care

Cables represent the arteries of the PC, so it’s important to take care of them so that they can do their job.

Here are some top cable care tips:

Never harshly twist or bend cables. They might seem flexible, but the inner wire strands on most of the cables are very delicate and easily damaged.

Never tug on cable connectors.

Store cables flat until needed.

Never crush a cable underneath a heavy weight and try to avoid trapping them between devices or in the case lid.

Never tie back a cable with wire ties. These ties can easily cut through the outer sheathing and cause a short circuit that will damage components or could even start a fire.

Removing a Stuck Connector

The power cables and data ribbons are prime candidates for becoming stuck after being fitted (they have a knack for becoming almost instantly stuck). Never tug on the wires to remove them because this can easily damage the cables.

To safely remove the connector, firmly grasp the connector and pull on it gently, gradually increasing the force until it gives way.

It that doesn’t work, grasp the sides of the connector and gently rock it side to side to loosen it while pulling. Be careful how much force you use to remove it — it will give way quickly and leave your hand flying with great force toward something that’s both important and fragile (or sharp!).

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FIGURE 7-1: A typical optical drive.

Physically, a CD and a DVD look the same, although if you’re eagle-eyed you will have spotted that a DVD is slightly thicker than a CD.

Another obvious difference is the name!

CD – Compact disc

DVD – Digital versatile disc (sometimes known as a digital video disc)

The main differences between a CD and a DVD are overall capacity and data bandwidth (or how much data you can get off the disk in a given time).

A CD can hold between 650 and 700 MB of data, while a DVD can hold a minimum of 4.7 GB, enough for a full-length movie. Capacities of DVD discs vary because they can store data in two different layers on the disc and also because they can be double-sided (have data on both the top and the bottom of the disc). Table 7-1 lists the capacities of DVDs.

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Capacities don’t double as you add a layer. This is because data has to be written to the disc to cover the transition from one layer to another, which consumes space, making it unavailable for data.

DVDs also have the bandwidth to transfer data fast enough to play a movie full-screen in high quality, and the DVD drive you can buy to fit into your PC is compatible with discs that you play in your home cinema DVD player.

DVDs aren’t just for movies — you can find all sorts of content on them, from files and applications to music.

The choice you have to make is to whether you have a PC that can read (and write) CDs, DVDs, or both.

Optical Drive Basics

CD and DVD drives are collectively known as optical drives. They are optical because they use a small laser to read the discs. Data is stored on the disc in the form of pits in a thin aluminum sheet (or dark dye spots in the plastic for recordable discs) written in a spiral pattern from the center outwards. The discs are rotated in the drive, and a laser beam reads the patterns of pits and transforms this digital information into information the computer can understand.

Drives are fitted to the IDE (Integrated Device Electronics) cable inside the PC (the same ribbon cable to which parallel ATA hard drives are connected). Likewise, optical drives are powered by standard 4-pin hard drive power cables.

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FIGURE 7-2: Optical drive connectors.

Optical drives are fitted to the 5-1/4 inch drive bays and require front access on the case (which will generally be covered initially by a blank plastic fascia).

How to Choose an Optical Drive

The choices that you have to make when choosing an optical drive revolve around what capability you want your PC to have in terms of CD or DVD support.

To make things simple, we recommend that you provide your new PC support for both CD and DVD. This can be done by simply buying and fitting a DVD-ROM drive into your system. (ROM stands for read-only memory, since standard discs are read only and cannot be written to.) DVD drives are backward compatible with CDs and can read both types of disc. You don’t have to do anything special when you change disc types — the drive detects the disc, recognizes the format, and reads the data. All this is handled automatically and doesn’t need any user input.

When choosing an optical drive, apart from the format it supports, the other important consideration is speed.

Take a look at the front of most CD or DVD drives, and you’ll see numbers such as:

x16

12x2x24

52x32x52

These numbers indicate the speed of the drive in question. When the number is on its own, as in the case of x16, this indicates the read speed of the drive in question as a multiple of the basic read speed of a disc, which would be x1. The basic read speed is different for both CD and DVD drives.

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CD – 150 KB/s or 0.15 MB/s

DVD – 1.3 MB/s

As you can see from those numbers, the basic read speed of a DVD drive is much higher than that of a CD. A x16 DVD drive would read data at 16 x 1.3 MB/s, giving a read speed of 20.8 MB/s, while a CD drive with that speed rating (a very low speed for modern driver) would read data at only 2.4 MB/s.

On CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drives, you see only the single speed rating. Speed ratings such as 52x32x52 are seen on drives that can write (or burn) CDs or DVDs. These are collectively known as “recordable,” “writer,” or “rewritable” drives. Before we look at the speeds for drives capable of creating discs, let’s take a look at the drives themselves.

Optical Writer Drives

A writable drive allows you to take data from your PC and write or burn it to a CD or a DVD disc. Given the capacity of these discs, this can be a very cheap and convenient way to make copies of your data.

CD and DVD writers require special “writable” discs to write the data to.

Writer drives look like standard optical drives (apart from the fact that the labeling will indicate that it is a drive capable of burning discs) and fit into the PC in the same way. Internally, however, the drive has a laser that is used to change the color of a dye impregnated into a recordable disc.

Writer drives need special software in order to burn data to the disc. The drive you buy might be supplied with the software or you might have to buy your own. CD burning is supported by Windows XP, so you can also burn CDs through the operating system.

Optical drives break down into three broad categories, as shown in Table 7-2.

Table 7-2 Types of Optical Drive

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However, things are never as clear as they first appear. These drive types can be further broken down into different categories.

Types of CD Writers

There are two different CD writers:

CD-R

CD-RW

The key to understanding these drives is in the R and RW. Different drives support different formats. When buying a drive, consider whether you want R or RW capability. The price difference between R and RW drives is small, and it’s a good idea to get a DVD drive that supports rewriting of discs. See Table 7-3.

DVD formats are even more complex as there are a number of formats. See Table 7-4.

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It’s wise to choose a drive that supports a number of formats as this gives you better scope and you encounter far fewer hassles when you come to buying blank discs. Drives that support a variety of formats are quite common nowadays and prevent the user from being locked to a specific format.

When you buy a drive, check for format support carefully. If in doubt, ask for more information.

Writable Drive Speeds

So, now that you’ve covered the discs, let’s go back to drive speeds. Let’s decipher the following speeds:

52x32x52

You can break this up into three speeds: 52, 32, and 52. These speeds refer to write speed, rewrite speed, and read speeds, respectively.

This means that a drive marked at 52x32x52 writes data at 52 speed (7.8 MB/s), rewrites data (on rewritable discs) at 32 speed (4.8 MB/s), and reads data at 52 speed (7.8 MB/s).

Write speed of 52 0.15 MB/s multiplied by 52 = 7.8 MB/s

Rewrite speed of 32 0.15 MB/s multiplied by 32 = 4.8 MB/s

Read speed of 52 0.15 MB/s multiplied by 52 = 7.8 MB/s

DVD writer drive speeds seem slower on the face of it than CD writer speeds, but this is not the case. A 16x speed DVD writer would write data at 20.8 MB/s.

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Disc Writing Process

The process of writing a disc requires both software and hardware. The process is simple.

1.Have a writable drive!

2.Insert a blank writable disc into the drive (you can erase a CD-RW/DVD-RW/ DVD+RW; all others have to be blank).

3.Launch your CD-burning software (you might have had software supplied with the drive, have bought your own, or use the feature built into Windows).

4.Select the files for burning to the disc.

5.Start the burning process.

6.When the burning process is finished the disc will be ejected from the drive.

7.Label the disc (using a special CD labeling pen or a labeling system).

8.Store the disc safely.

The Right Drive for You

So, what do you choose? Price-wise there’s very little difference between ROM drives and writable and rewritable drives, and because of this we strongly recommend that you buy a rewritable drive, preferably a DVD drive since this gives you the greatest flexibility and choice — you can burn CDs when you want sub-700-MB storage capacity and DVDs when you want more. It’s now possible to buy a good quality multiformat DVD rewritable drive for under $50.

Another important question is how many drives to fit in the system you are building. Many people find that two drives (either two writable drives or one writable drive and one read-only drive) offer greater flexibility and convenience — especially if you might be copying a lot of discs.

If you don’t think that you need two optical drives then just get one — it’s easy enough to install a second at a later date.

The usual rule applies. The more expensive the drive, the better the quality generally (in terms of reliability and compatibility with discs). However, in our experience cheap drives can be just as good as expensive ones. If you’re buying online, be sure to read all the other customer reviews so that you can get a general feel for the quality of what you are buying.