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Superficially, there is little difference between the drives from CD through Blu-ray. Only the capabilities differ. Generally, a drive that handles a particular medium will also handle all media with lower capacities. The tray door of the drive is imprinted with several logos indicating its capabilities.
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Combo drives can usually read and write to all listed formats, except they cannot write to the highest capacity. For example, a DVD-RW/Blu-Ray Disc combo drive can read or write to DVDs and CDs but can only read Blu-ray Disc.
Early drives were installed, like IDE/ATA hard disks. They connected to the ribbon cables and were configured as master or slave. Optical drives were usually placed on their own controller port and cable. You shouldn't have your optical media drive on the same cable as your primary hard drive. Data transfer to and from an optical drive is slower than a hard drive and will monopolize the cable when transferring.
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The above image shows a typical full-sized optical drive. Notice indents in the tray for full-sized 120 mm disks and 80 mm Mini-CD disks. The indent for the Mini-CD disks also accepts business card-sized disks. The tray usually has small flanges to hold full-sized disks in place, with the tray open when the drive is mounted vertically.
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The above image is a typical notebook computer-sized optical drive. The disk snaps onto the spindle, so no tray indents are required.
Newer optical drives connect to SATA ports like modern hard drives. The mounting screws are smaller than hard drive screws (the same size as floppy drives). Other than that, physically installing an optical drive is straightforward. Software configuration, etc., will be discussed in operating systems.
If a disk has to be removed while the computer is turned off, the optical drive tray has a manual eject system. Insert a stiff wire (such as a straightened large paper clip) into this hole. Some systems engage a latch that opens the drive tray (common with laptop drives). With other systems, the wire engages with a gear that, when pushed, partly opens the tray. Several pushes may be required to open the tray fully. Once the tray is partially opened, it can be forced to open fully by pulling on the tray.
Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI) is a standard for ATA devices that are not hard disk drives, such as optical drives.
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