The short answer is you buy this $20 device. Now, for the longer answer.
So, you’ve got a CD drive, or a DVD drive, that you’ve taken out of a desktop computer (just like the photo to the right) and you want to connect that CD or DVD drive to a laptop. How do you do it? But first, let’s ask why you might want to do this:
1. The drive on your laptop went bad, and you need a way to get something from a CD or DVD onto your laptop right now.
2. The CD/DVD drive on your laptop just doesn’t work that well, or that fast, and it’s slowing your life down and causing you to miss parties.
3. The drive on your laptop only plays/burns CDs, not DVDs, but you happen to have this desktop DVD burner just sitting there…if there were only a way to hook it up to your laptop…
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were just some cable you hook up to the desktop drive, and then you plug it in a USB port on your laptop, and it just works? And wouldn’t it be awesome if that cable wasn’t super expensive or hard to find, like maybe if it were just $20 or something?
Well, you’re in luck, because the Vantec CB-ISATAU2 supports a wide range of SATA/IDE devices including 3.5″ and 2.5″ SATA/IDE hard drives and 5.25” optical drives such as CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and DVD burners. Or in other words, buy the Vantec CB-ISATAU2 from NewEgg.com (a highly reputable online retailer of assorted computer accessories), plug the cable into your drive, plug the power cord into your drive, plug the other end of the cable into a USB port on your laptop, wait 5 seconds for the laptop to detect it, and what do you know, you’re connected and ready to go. It’s that easy.
The second photo shows the back of the drive with the cable and power cord attached. There are more cables in the box, but you just need the power cord and the main cable, nothing else. It’s pretty easy, and hard to get wrong. The one thing you might get wrong is to try and put the main cable on upside down. There is a little bump that fits into a slot on the drive, but it’s not obvious unless you know about it, so just push slowly, and if you encounter any resistance make sure you’re putting it on right.
