I will be installing a new re-writable CD rom drive this aft. and I have a couple of questions. Should I leave in the CD rom drive I have and install the new one as well or should I remove the old one? Anything I should know before starting?
If you plan on backing up CDs you have, you’ll need to have both CD drives in. Having two in isn’t going to hurt anything, as long as your computer has the physical space for it. Other than that, it’s pretty simple to install, and there should be instructions on how to do it.
OTOH, it may not have instructions…
The most likely setup at the moment is you’ve got a hard drive and the CD-Rom on one IDE channel - they’ll both be connected by the same cable. You can leave this intact, and put the new drive on the second IDE channel, for which you need a new IDE cable (there might be one supplied). In this case, the new drive needs to be set to be the only drive on the channel, usually done with awkward jumpers on the rear of the drive (there’ll be a key somewhere showing how to connect them). If you decide to replace the old CD drive, which can be necessary if it’s too awkward to physcally route the new cable around it, then the new drive will need to be set as ‘slave’, with the hard drive remaining as ‘master’. Hopefully this makes sense…
Oh, and to add the extra drive, you’ll need a free plug on the power supply - it’ll be a four-in-a-line one. There should be one spare, but if not, you can get a splitter to share an existing one.