All optical drives under the hood are cdrom readers based on the origional 1x cdrom by Phillips Electronics. With the decline of the floppy drive, ALL optical drives have to be able to boot the computer just like a floppy or a hard drive using bootable media such as an operating system CD. This simple fact is often overlooked by tech support. Instead when you are having problems they immediately assume a problem with Windows or your operating system.
Typically, most computer manufacturers configure the drives that are at the top of the computer as the "Bootable Drive". These drives are typically also the last drive on the cable. If you have 2 optical drives, you can test the second drive by removing the data cable from both drives and connecting the end connector of the cable to the second drive.
If your optical drive cannot read a cd and boot the computer the drive is defective. It's not the operating system.
In the illustration above, I list what each optical drive type is capable of and what uses that peticular drive has for you.. Determinimg what "extra features or what to call your drive basically depends on looking at the faceplate of the drive and look for the industry logo's. Notice all the drives say "compact disc".
I can't count the number of individuals that didn't listen to thier cdroms discs or install software when the cdrom died and they had a perfectly good burner capable of doing just that and more, I can't count the number of people that have been forced to reload the operating system prior to tech support approving to replace a bad drive either.
A little Knowlege goes a long Way