If you don’t have a drive in a bay, the installation process for a CD or DVD
will entail major disassembly of the laptop. You’ll likely have to remove the
bottom cover and perhaps the top cover and keyboard to gain access to the
mounting screws for the drive and the connecting power and data cables. If
you’re brave enough to do the job yourself, figure on a slow and careful disas-
sembly, reassembly, installation of new drivers, and testing that will require
at least an hour and probably more.If you’re going to hire a professional to do the work for you, you’ll have to
pay for that time plus the cost of the drive and any shipping costs. I’d esti-
mate a bill in the range of $200–$300.Can it ....................................................................................................
For most users, a much better solution is to declare the broken drive — as
the British say — redundant. By that I mean, fire the bloke.Figure 9-2:
A replace-
ment
CD-R/DVD
drive ready
to replace
an existing
internal
optical
drive.
Connectors
from one
device to
another are
the same;
device
driver
software
identifies
the
hardware to
the
operating
system.
Chapter 9: Going Round and Around: CD and DVD Drives 161