The AOpen DRW4410 4x DVD+R/RW Drive
A drive that won't burn through your budget!

By Robert Maloney
December 4, 2003

 

Quality and Installation of the AOpen DRW4410
A brief course in setting up a new drive

         


The AOpen DRW4410 comes in an off-white, otherwise plain bezel, with a matching tray.  Along with the company's logo on the front of the tray are the supported formats, lest one might forget. Our particular model was manufactured in July 2003, printed on the upper label along with the serial and part numbers.  The drive felt a bit hefty, weighing in at just over 2 and a half pounds.  Nothing else too remarkable here.

    

The front panel was limited in that in only had an eject button and one LED indicator.  The powered tray slides out, albeit somewhat slowly, but feels firmly placed within the tracks.  Should a problem occur with the ejection of a CD/DVD, a small emergency eject hole is placed to the left of the eject button.  A straightened out paper clip can be entered a few centimeters until the tray unlocks, and then the tray can be slowly pulled out to remove the problematic disc.

    

The back of the drive had all of the usual IDE and power connections one would expect.  4 pin MOLEX power cables go in on the right, and unless forced should only fit one way. The largest section in the middle is for a 40-pin IDE cable, with PIN 1 usually designated by a red stripe, placed closest to the power cable.  There are also three smaller sets of pins towards the left end of the drive.  One set is used for connecting the provided audio cable and another for designating the drive as Master or Slave by moving the jumper cap to short the pins.

The drive can be mounted either horizontally or vertically, in which case the eject button must be on the upper edge.  Usually, this amounts to finding an open 5 1/4" bay, placing the drive in the bay until the holes match up, and tightening the four mounting screws. If the drive is going to be the sole removable media drive, it's best to place the jumper cap to Master and have an IDE cable running from the drive to the secondary IDE port, assuming the hard drive is attached to the first IDE port.  The four pin audio cable runs from the back of the drive into an awaiting connector on a sound card or on the motherboard itself.  These are usually labeled CD-In and generally only fit one way.  The final step is to attach the power cable, close the chassis, and power up your system.  Just like that you're in the movie business!

HotHardware's Testing Setup