Daniel Joseph Drazen was born in Chicago in 1951. He attended LaVerne Elementary School, Lincoln Junior High School, and J. Sterling Morton High School-West, in Berwyn, Illinois. He attended Andrews University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974. He then earned a Master of Arts in Library Science in 1976 at Dominican University (then named Rosary College) in River Forest, Illinois.

He worked at several information brokerages in Chicago from 1977 to 1990, working primarily in online database searching. Following this, he worked as librarian at the headquarters of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists in Park Ridge. In 1992, he moved to Berrien Springs and began working as the Editor of the Seventh-day Adventist Periodical Index, a position he currently holds. At Andrews, he earned a second Master's Degree in 2003.

He began freelance writing while in graduate school, and has had two dozen articles published in several different publications. He has had two books published by Review and Herald Publishing: Samuel: One Small Light in 2002 and Samuel: Tears of a Nation in 2004. His article "A history of the Seventh-day Adventist Periodical Index, Part 3: still a work in progress," which appeared in the ASDAL Action newsletter in 2013, was a memoir written on the 20th anniversary of his becoming Editor.