Your CD or DVD drive is broken? It doesn’t seem to work properly? Don't call the technician yet. This article may be able to help you get it going again.

Although the logic may elude you, this series is actually related to a different series of articles, about making sound work on your computer! That’s right – the sound system and the CD on your computer are related. If you open your computer box, you’ll see that a small wire connects the CD drive to the sound card or to the parts of your motherboard dealing with your sound system.

What is the difference between a CD disk and a DVD disk?

They are both similar in external appearance. The drive is also similar in appearance.

The main difference is in the technology. DVD disks have a much greater capacity. Whereas a CD drive can hold some brief sound clips or about ten songs, a DVD drive can hold an entire full-length action-packed movie.

In general, DVD drives can read DVD disks or CD disks. CD drives cannot read DVD disks.

How can I tell whether the drive in my system is for CD disks or for DVD disks?

Good question. Both drives seem to look pretty much the same from the outside. The disk that goes in looks very much the same. It might say CD or DVD on the outside – but it frequently doesn’t indicate it.

A good way to find out is by the driver. The driver is the set of instructions which help the computer understand the information that is sent from the drive. You can find out which driver you have for your computer, and you will then be able to tell whether you have a CD or a DVD drive.

Click on Start, (Settings,) Control Panel, System, and look through the list for CD or DVD drives. Click on the plus sign to the left, and it will expand, showing the name of the driver. That name should clarify what kind of drive you have.

That’s why it’s called a driver. It’s the software that makes the drive work.

It is difficult to generalize about all problems and to try to find the things that would help your particular CD drive work best. The following issues must be considered:

• The age of the drive. Older CD drives work in a different way from newer CD drives.
• The speed of the drive. Newer drives do not require the same drivers as older drives. Newer drives or 32-bit drives don't need the same drivers as 16-bit drives.
• Whether it is a laptop computer or a desktop computer. Interestingly, these drives work in different ways.
• Whether it is used for transferring or saving data or for multimedia games or animation.
• Standards. Whether it uses the standard the industry standard technology (usually old technology) or a proprietary interface and driver.
• The size of the disk. Most likely, you have a standard sized, 5.25" disk. However, your drive will work with smaller disks as well. As a matter of fact, there are two grooves in the CD tray. One is for smaller disks, which hold much less data, and the other one is for larger disks.

That does make it difficult to generalize why your CD drive doesn’t work, and it makes it more of a challenge to locate the problem and to help.

Please keep one more point in mind. This article is written for both computer novices, for computer experts and everybody in between.

For that reason, please bear with me when I write things in simplistic and layman terms yet become involved in rather complex and arcane and advanced topics. In this way I will try to fill everybody’s needs without writing separate articles using the appropriate terminology for each group. I hope that everybody will understand and bear with me.

Older CD Drives versus Newer CD Drives

Older CD drives, from the 1990s, worked in a manner that is different from the newer drives. The turning point is at 12-speed CD drives. Newer drives ultimately run faster, but they start from a dead stop. Thus, transferring a small file may actually take less time with an older drive than with a newer drive. On the other hand, action games that require continued, fast drive motion will not work properly with older, slower drives.