I just purchased and BenQ dvd-rw drive and i looking to install it. It did not come with any kind of calble etc and i am wondering if i will need one to install the unit or will the hookup needed already be on my comp ? The drive is a BenQ DW1620 and my computer is a HP Pavilion z2000n , i have never installed a drive before and it came without any manuel so im kind of in the dark. Just want to know if i have to purchase some type of extra ribbon or cable to actually hook the drive up before i start taking my comp apart.
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The IDE bus in a computer is able to handle 2 devices at once. The IDE cable that connects these devices has three connectors. One plugs into the motherboard (usually blue), the middle to a "slave" drive(usually gray), the other end into the "master" drive (usually black).
Most motherboards have 2 IDE busses, so you can have up to 4 IDE devices connected at any given time. Unless you're trying to add a fifth, you'll be able to add your drive easily.
How you proceed from here will depend on how many other, and what kind of devices are currently installed. If you only have a hard drive and one CD/DVD drive, they are probably both tied to 1 bus, which means you'll need to purchase a new IDE cable (don't worry, they're cheap).
Installing a drive is pretty easy from there, just make sure you get the master/slave jumpers set correctly for both devices on the cable. Your primary hard drive should always be the master drive on IDE bus 1. I'd recommend you configure the DVD-RW as the master on IDE channel 2, set any additional hard drive as slave on bus 2, any optical reader as slave on bus 1.
If you move stuff around on the cable, you may need to adjust some settings in the BIOS, but most computers will figure out the change and adjust accordingly.