Computer Hardware

Digital Video Disk drive by John Anthony

DVD also known as the Digital Versatile Disk drive, installs in one of the external 5 1/4 inch drive bays in the PC. It is secured by machine screws. Some manufacturers offer special rail-like systems that mount on the DVD. These allow the drive to be removed from the PC without having to remove screws.
It is designed to optically access data stored on a DVD. A laser moves back and forth near the disk surface and accesses data at a very fast rate.
A 4-pin cable from the power supply plugs into the CDD and provides power to it.
Data between the DVD drive and the motherboard is carried on a 40-pin IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) cable.
There are two types of DVD drives that typically go into PCs.
- DVD-ROM (Read Only Memory) can read DVDs and CDs and costs about $75.
- DVD-RAM (Random Access Memory) units can read and write DVDs. They can also read CDs and cost about $500.
A standard DVD stores up to 4.7 Gbytes on one side of the disk. Digitally formatted movies can be stored on a standard DVD in MPEG-2 format.