Stephen Irons wrote:
The DVD-RW drive in my laptop is partially faulty:* It cannot read or write CDs -- it just sits there going clonk every two seconds -- pre-recorded music CDs, recorded data CD-R, blank CR-R, makes no difference. It does this even when I have entered the BIOS setup at power on, so it seems to be the drive itself, not related to software. * it plays pre-recorded movie DVDs correctly. I have not tried writing DVDs of any type, or tried reading self-burned /DVD[+-]RW?/ For reference, it is an NEC ND-6550A.I was busy writing a CD, when Brasero popped up an box saying something like 'An unexpected error occurred'. It has never worked since then.Some advice wanted: * Why would it fail in this way? What is special about CDs that it cannot read them, but it can read DVDs * The 3-year guarantee expired 2 months ago. Is this something I could make a fuss about? * An exact replacement does not seem available any more. Any suggestions for drop-in replacements? * Does a replacement have to be Linux-compatible?Thank you
Thank you for all your answers. I was not aware that DVD used a different colour laser from CD. And Blue Ray uses yet another colour...
Dell have a great system to filter out-of-guarantee calls: when you dial the 24 hour help line, the first thing you have to give them is the service tag number. This tells the system that the guarantee is expired, so you go onto the back of the queue. I gave up after 30 minutes.
The same story on-line, except that you have the option of renewing the guarantee after paying a $110 inspection fee. Well, a new DVD writer costs about that...
I might have been able to fuss with a real letter but life is too short for that.
It appears that CD and DVD writers are like hard drives: as long as they look physically the same, they are all compatible. You choose according to the specs you want.
I bought a Panasonic UJ-870 from laptopbattery.co.nz in Christchurch and it dropped straight into the hole and worked. I had to transfer a little bent metal securing tab from the old to the new: it was held on by two screws. Also, the plastic bezel on the new one was about 2mm thinner than the old, so the drive looked pretty ugly when closed. However, a bit of poking around with a jeweller's screwdriver revealed the two little clips the popped the bezel onto the floor and the old one went on in its place.
I almost bought an external slimline DVD writer from www.dealextreme.com for about 2/3 of the cost of the drive from laptopbattery. If I were to do it again, I probably would. I am fairly sure that it would be possible to remove the mechanism from the case and drop it into the laptop. However, I could not get any proper specs for the unit from dealextreme, and, at the time, was not that confident about how similar different drives are.
Stephen Irons ======================================================================= This email, including any attachments, is only for the intended addressee. It is subject to copyright, is confidential and may be the subject of legal or other privilege, none of which is waived or lost by reason of this transmission. If the receiver is not the intended addressee, please accept our apologies, notify us by return, delete all copies and perform no other act on the email. Unfortunately, we cannot warrant that the email has not been altered or corrupted during transmission. =======================================================================
