Short Lifetimes of Optical Drives? 369
lpq asks: "I have various optical disc readers from standard DVD players (apart from a computer), and both CD and DVD readers on one or more computers. My home stereo DVD's have been problematic for a while. One of them won't even take a DVD cleaner disk as it doesn't 'recognize' it as a playable disc, even though it plays discs that my other DVD player won't play. Usually, between the two of them, I can play most discs, but occasionally some discs, purchased new, won't play on either of them. Heaven forbid if it is an older or used DVD which have even more problems (some of my DVDs are approaching old age at an age of around 5 years). However, this is more about my computer's optical drives, including the CD readers. Both CD readers on two different computers have 'died' and are not able to read program disks. Am I specifically plagued by bad luck or do others go through CD/DVD drives so quickly?"
"My built-in DVD reader (Dell laptop) no longer reads DVD's, but can still read CD's. My external SCSI plextor has a hard time with music CD's, but can still read most program CD's. My iomega external won't recognize program CD's but can still seem to do DAE on audio CD's.
My internal DVD/CD drive in my desktop can't read either DVD's or CD's. It was about 3 years old. The iomega external was about 2 years old. The laptop internal DVD was about 3-4 years old.
I took apart the IOMEGA, thinking it the easiest to get apart and took an air blower to the lens, but looking at it under a magnifying glass, I can't see a thing wrong with it. It still won't load any program disks, and kicks them back out as unreadable.
One computer is in my bedroom, the other in my living room with both commercial DVD players being in the living room (one used to be in bedroom, but with reliability issues of the older one in the living room, I moved the one in the bedroom out to living room. I still have to switch cables frequently depending on the DVD, as most play on the Digitron, the Sony seems to have poorer error recovery.
Is there anything I can do for maintenance. Air-canisters seem fairly limited in effectiveness and I've verified, at least in the IOMEGA external USB, it wasn't a scratched lens or at least nothing visible under magnification. This is really starting to drive me a bit crazy. It doesn't seem like I should have to replace these things so often.
My parents bought a new DVD player, and 2 out of 3 movies they tried to rent to play were unplayable. They are in their 70s-80s, so they just didn't want to bother with such unreliable technology.
It concerns me to hear about higher capacity DVD's, since with greater density, errors will affect wider areas on the disk. I'm always careful not to touch surfaces of CD's/DVD's but I don't know if the higher density DVD's will be very stable for movie or data storage if they don't do something to improve error recovery.
What do other people do for optical disk drive maintenance? Do other people have to replace them every 2-5 years because the drive is no longer cleanable?
As for video DVD's, should I just be resigned to play errors on almost 50% of DVD's -- usually they won't play on at least one of my players. What about bit-rot on the DVD's. Should I also be resigned to the fact that a DVD purchase is really only a temporary (5 +/-2 year rental) before it becomes unreadable?
The more egregious DVD problems have been with new, multi-CD series, where maybe one disk out of a 6-disk set (Buffy-season 2), Stargate Season 7, just won't play? It's a pain when they are gotten via mail-order even if they are a reputable dealer, since in both cases I've had 1 out of the set be bad, it was the last disc which I didn't get to for a few - several weeks.
What am I doing wrong?"
yeah. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:yeah. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yeah. (Score:5, Funny)
What model do you have?
Re:yeah. (Score:2)
DVD cleaner disc (Score:4, Informative)
Re:DVD cleaner disc (Score:5, Insightful)
Original poster, are you a smoker? The same buildup that makes white walls go yellow also builds up on the lens. You can clean it with the right tools.
I recondidition anything I have that breaks, and CD readers are a common one. You can often fix them by dismantling, cleaning, regreasing, then reassembly. It's common knowledge that mechanical parts are more prone to failure than solid-state, so the likelyhood is that in each of your devices there is a hardware problem.
Remember the original Playstation that had serious problems after a while? Problem there was that the little sled that the lens was on had a plastic runner. After X hours of seeking, it would wear down slightly, causing the lens to drop on one side. This is why turning the PSX upside down made a difference. You could fix that by filling in what had worn with some glue, filed down to make a smooth runner.
That depends... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That depends... (Score:3, Interesting)
Also just simply taking better care of your discs is not such a bad idea. The player is usually replacable the media sometimes isnt...
Dont let things like food or drink near the equiment either
Re:DVD cleaner disc (Score:2)
Re:DVD cleaner disc (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure it's a good idea to blow canned air directly on the lense, either.
Also, stop buying home theatre DVD players. They suck. I've not gone through as many as people I know, but they don't seem to last nearly as long as anything in my computers. Build a myth TV system with quality Plextor or Lite-on drives... had goo
Compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell yes (Score:2)
running out of department ideas (Score:3, Funny)
Well I guess this is from _the_ department :P
Re:running out of department ideas (Score:2)
Just replace it (Score:4, Insightful)
I do agree though, that longevity seems to be a much bigger issue for DVD players than for CDs. I have one of the original Discmans with skip protection from circa 1993, and it still works just fine. I bought my first DVD player around 1997-8 IIRC, and am now on my third...
Re:Just replace it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Just replace it (Score:2)
I won't buy component CD or DVD systems anymore. They fail too much. I'm building a MythTV system so I can swap out the drives when they fail. Sadly, I wish it wasn't like this..
Then again, I haven't really bought a lot of CDs in the last two years though, streaming music has kept me pretty happy.
Re:Just replace it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Just replace it (Score:2)
I'd put a disc in and it would kinda spin up, but didn't sound right.
I had a CD drive in one of my servers (B&W G3 from 1999) that would actually drop the CD onto the tray. I could hear it spin up then there would be a click and a plastic-on-plastic sound as the disc dropped into the tray and spun a revolution or two.
Re:Just replace it (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the real problem is most people are so concerened about saving a couple bucks when they buy it only to have to buy a replacement later on. We trully are living in the "throw-away" society. Quality is just another buzzword in advertising anymore, it doesn't actually mean anything.
Not to troll here, but the quality of most manufactured goods in China SUCK unless the manufacturer actually forces them to do a good job.
Re:Just replace it (Score:2)
You realize we're talking about the digital world where standards are always in flux, right? It's a lot easier to pay $50 for a DVD player that'll last a year or two than it is to spend $300 on one and hope it 'lasts'. It isn't like these are items of high importance.
Re:Just replace it (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell that to the hypothetical mother who put her baby's photo CD into her drive, only to have the disk explode into a million pieces, or the student who can't get his photos or report off the disk, or the guy who put his family's Christmas present onto a DVD that isn't readable in any other players.
These devices are about the most important I/O device a computer has besides the monitor and keyboard.
Re:Just replace it (Score:3, Informative)
For what it's worth, my plastic 45 euro Chinese DVD player has far outlasted my 350 euro JVC player, and has seen a lot more use too.
What's your environment like? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's your environment like? (Score:5, Insightful)
DO NOT EXECUTE PREVIOUS SIG (Score:4, Interesting)
The code above executes "rm -rf /".
Re:DO NOT EXECUTE PREVIOUS SIG (Score:5, Informative)
Almost right. It does rm -rf ~ instead, which is perhaps worse as it's more likely to work :-)
decomposed in detail for the morbidly curious: http://puetzk.org/projects/perl-sig-trojan.txt [puetzk.org]
I had to put it at a URL, as describing obfuscated perl without pissing off the lameness filter is hopeless. Maybe it's trying to tell me something...
You're not alone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You're not alone (Score:3, Insightful)
Welll.... no, not really. There isn't really any manufacturer lock-in, and the discs are actually pretty damn cheap.
A spindle could include 100 discs, which is a *lot*.
Personally, my Lite-On DVD-ROM drive started giving me problems with CD-Rs and CD-RWs, to the extent that it won't read them at all (including those from reputable sources); and yet it gives no problems whatsoever with pre-recorded media.
Ditto (Score:2)
Re:You're not alone (Score:3, Interesting)
I love Taco Bell (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds pretty standard (Score:5, Interesting)
My home DVD player will play most movies but with jitters - skipping through parts of movies, freezing on the occasional disk.
I've switched to using disk & lan for everything except rented DVDs. No backups onto CD or DVD, but instead onto multiple redundant HD servers. Movies in digital form where possible. Music all digital since at least 5 years.
Laptops (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Laptops (Score:3, Interesting)
James
You're not alone at all. (Score:3, Interesting)
That is until I started building my own computers. Haven't had a problem...yet that is. I don't know if Gateway and Dell just cheap out when it comes to the CD-ROM drives they put into their machines, but I've had several go out on me over the years.
Put crap in, you're going to get a crap Drive. But honestly, I don't know why there were so many failed drives.
Re:You're not alone at all. (Score:2)
Re:You're not alone at all. (Score:2)
Re:You're not alone at all. (Score:2)
Of course they do. Think lowest bidder. Dropping an extra five bucks per drive is a one time hit for you that you won't notice. To them, it cuts into their margins big time.
Re:You're not alone at all. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You're not alone at all. (Score:2)
DVD cleaner disk? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DVD cleaner disk? (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I've had more optical drive failures than HD failures over far fewer operating (spinning) hours. And I'm fairly careful about air cleanliness and case ventilation (no sucking air through drive slots.
Re:DVD cleaner disk? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:DVD cleaner disk? (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was shopping for a SCSI CD-RW for one of my workstations, I notced a huge correlation between price and the published MTBF number (up to a point, of course). I ended up paying twice as much for three times the MTBF, IIRC.
I do understand that MTBF is a statistical quanity for large numbers of drives, but a high MTBF is also a vote of confidence on the part of the manufacturer regarding their expected average quality.
Brands are sometimes worth extra cash (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Brands are sometimes worth extra cash (Score:2)
http://plextor.com/english/products/716SA.htm
where's mah credit card?! I didn't realize DVD burners had gotten so cheap so quick!
I've had weird issues, too (Score:5, Interesting)
To address your question, I think you may be on to something. Perhaps, though, few people notice that optical devices are flaky in general because we upgrade so often and so many other things go wrong with computers. All I know is that my work computer's CD burner is dying now. It reads CDs and DVDs fine, but it is starting to fail when burning CD burns. It's getting worse and now fails about 50% of the time. Are we getting screwed by shoddy manufacturers, or is there a fundamental problem with optical drives?
Re:I've had weird issues, too (Score:2)
Personal experience... (Score:2)
However, when it comes to portable CD players, my experience is completely the opposite. Normally (I'm still using a portable CD player, even though I have digital copies of my music collection on my PC...more to d
Eh? Dust/Dirt? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Eh? Dust/Dirt? (Score:2)
I've never had an Apple optical drive break (Score:2)
Maybe you should avoid buuying cheap PC components, or else expecting to replace it every two years as the cost of going cheap.
I also have a Sony jambox circa 1989 on which the CD player is slightly flakey but still functional. Ditto a 5 disc Teac CD player from around 1997. Maybe it's just you. ;-)
Re:I've never had an Apple optical drive break (Score:2)
James
Welcome to the disposable age (Score:4, Interesting)
The only upside is that everything keeps getting cheaper and more "featureful" so its not that bad to keep buying new stuff, but in general I find that consumer grade electronics are geared towards this quick obsolescence. If you want something to last, buy "professional" grade stuff. The low prices of regular junk is seductive, but don't count on any of it lasting.
Re:Welcome to the disposable age (Score:2)
While it may be possible you just had bad luck, I suspect something in your computing environment sucks. As in, incredibly hard on equipment. I've had one CDRW fail out of all my components and I wouldn't consider myself easy on them. I don't buy high priced stuff either.
Of course, it is entirely possible that you just got "lucky" getting hardware likely to fail. Both our experiences ar
Re:Welcome to the disposable age (Score:2)
DVD Cleaners etc (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's how to solve your problem: (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Don't use cleaner discs.
3. If your disks get scratched, clean them with toothpaste. (make sure to clean the toothpaste afterwards.
Re:Here's how to solve your problem: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Here's how to solve your problem: (Score:2)
I've used toothpaste on my CDs too, and it helped. At least I thought it did. The CDs that skipped before, didn't skip afterwards.
I can't believe that so many people haven't heard of using toothpaste to clean discs.
I suppose if I told them that toothpaste can also clean battery terminals they'd think I'm crazy, or a Crest sales rep.
Re:Here's how to solve your problem: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Here's how to solve your problem: (Score:3, Interesting)
For CDs just use your fingers/thumbs. Often times just rubbing your thumb over the surface of the disk hard enough to generate a little heat will smooth out enough of the crap to make a copy of the disk. In reality what you are doing is *probably* filling the *small* scratches with the oils etc from your fingers. Whatever, I've managed to recover so
Re:Here's how to solve your problem: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Here's how to solve your problem: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wright's Silver Cream (a silverware polish) seems to work as well as, if not better than, toothpaste for de-scratching CDs, although I'd try de-natured alcohol and a foam swab for laser lens cl
Hey Slashdot...! (Score:2)
Re:Hey Slashdot...! (Score:5, Insightful)
I often carp about silly Ask Slashdots, but I consider this to be a really good one -- even though the basic problem is going unsolved. It's nice when we can help somebody, but that's not the main point. If you just want to solve a technical problem, there are plenty of places that can do a better job of helping you than Slashdot. What makes a good Ask Slashdot (or any other good Slashdot story) is when we end up talking about an issue that's important to all of us, debating its nature and consequences, and generall educating each other.
Typical (Score:3, Interesting)
On a related note, stop using DVD cleaner discs - all they do is scratch the lens unless your DVD drive is located somewhere that it collects massive amounts of dust. Electronics stores have been pushing those stupid things on consumers for years because the markup runs anywhere from nine-hundred to several-thousand percent depending on whether you just buy the disc or buy it as part of some silly cleaning kit comeplete with a soap and isopropyl alcohol solution.
Just my two cents... (Score:2, Interesting)
I am, and my drives display the same short-life behaviours as yours. I suspect tar glues to the optic and is not removable without a major cleanup (mechnical action like air blow or cleaner discs is inefficient).
My 2 cents (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, nowadays, I tend to buy Sony/LiteOn.
General Lack of Quality (Score:2)
Harddisks, the same, tape drives, monitors.. Pretty much any conusumer product really... They may *look* cooler, have more features, but they just are not made to last.
If they sell you something that lasts, where will their sales for next season come from?
Yes, and no (Score:2)
Optical drives and (windows) software problems (Score:2)
Disposable (Score:3, Interesting)
So how else do manufacturers cut corners? By skimping on quality control, obviously. If 20% of your production run dies within months of coming off the line, it costs you -- but apparently not as much as making your production methods bulletproof.
When my mother asked me to help her buy a DVD player, I knew she'd freak if she bought one that died quickly. So I looked hard for a model that has a solid reputation for never breaking down. Couldn't find a one. Even the expensive models from Big Name brands seem to get a lot of complaints that say, "Had it for a year, then it died." Thought of recommending a service contract, but that's almost as expensive as replacing the thing every other year. So I had her buy the cheapest one in sight, and crossed my fingers. So far so good.
Perhaps you're doing something wrong, but I think you've probably just had a run of bad luck. The only thing you can do is just replace the drives as they die. There ought to be a better answer to your problem than that -- but I really don't think there is.
Re:Disposable (Score:3, Insightful)
Not with the magic 90-day Warranty.
Keep optical drives away from vibrations and heat (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine had a portable CD player that he hooked through his home stereo with a Y-cable. He put the CD player on top of the amplifier when in use. Guess what happened? The heat from the ventilation slots on the amplifier ultimately killed the accuracy of the CD player such that it wouldn't track anymore.
My parents bought a cheap DVD player and set it on top of their TV. They don't have a home theater or stereo system, so they just use the speakers built into the TV. Plus, my dad is losing his hearing so he always has to jack the sound way up on movie to hear the dialog. Guess what? The DVD player now doesn't track right, probably due to all the vibrations being constantly sent through it by the speakers inside the TV set.
Laptop optical drives (and hard drives and screens and everything else) die frequently because people jostle their laptops around and mistreat them, so no surprise there. But if you're having as many optical drive tracking-related failures as you claim to be having, then your drives are probably getting damaged through thematic mistreatment. Make sure your drives aren't sitting on any surface that eminates heat or is carrying vibrations.
BTW, the reason heat kills tracking of optical drives is that 99% of optical drives are built with a standard type of laser-tracking mechanism. The laser head rides along a metal rod/rail on one side, and then a parallel worm gear drives the head movement on the other side. With this approach, it's crucial that the metal rod/rail and the sleeve that rides on it have a low-friction relationship so they don't catch when the worm gear on the other side is trying to slide the head around. It's also crucial that the worm gear itself have a low-friction relationship with the threaded sleeve that rides along it so that it won't catch or bump as it does its work. It's typical for manufacturers to put some special lubricant on both the worm gear and the slider rod to reduce friction -- and it turns out to be essential for the whole thing to work. If you continually expose the device to heat, or to extremely dry conditions, the lubricant dries up and then the device won't track properly anymore. I've fixed several CD/CD-ROM drives that weren't tracking right by simply opening them up and applying a safe-for-plastics (silicone-based) lubricant to the worm gear and rail/rod with a Q-tip, and then working it in evenly by putting in a full audio CD and skipping from track to track to cause the head to move along the full range back and forth a few times.
Easier method than Q tips (Score:3, Funny)
It looked so simple, with no disassembly required.
They fail sometimes, but not that often (Score:2)
I have a stack of five optical drives under my desk. Four of them are dead, but only one of those is a DVD drive; the rest are old CD-ROM drives. The working drive is a K Hypermedia 48x CD-RW, which a friend gave to me after replacing it with a DVD burner.
What's not in that stack is another drive of mine which failed in a very peculiar way: it reads silver-colored pressed discs and CD-Rs just fine, but it rejects gold-colored discs, which happen to be about half the DVDs I own. I'm not sure about CD-R
I always keep a couple spares on hand.. (Score:2)
My $2 (adjusted for inflation) (Score:4, Informative)
2) Make sure the case has positive air pressure inside (simplest way is to have one more intake fan, placed at least halfway up the case, than it does outflow fans), to keep air flowing OUT through the various drive orifices. I live in the dusty desert with house cats, and even so, thanks to their intake fans, my systems stay nearly white-glove clean inside.
3) Make sure the case has good cooling; some CDRWs are extremely heat-sensitive.
4) If you smoke, quit. Cig smoke residue is very hard on computer components. (Damp ocean air isn't much better.)
5) DON'T put labels on burned disks; there is no way you can align them exactly enough to avoid throwing the disk out of balance, and that can eventually damage the drive's alignment.
As to personal experiences:
ALL Yamaha CDRWs I've seen to date (20 so far, both SCSI and IDE) have died prematurely, due to overheating that eventually warps the laser out of alignment.
But otherwise, they're pretty damned durable. Right now in everyday use I have:
-- Plextor 24x CDRW (2001)
-- LiteOn 52x CDRW (2002)
-- LiteOn 48x CDRW (2002) -- has burned over 1000 disks (with occasional all-day marathons).
-- Acer 50x CDROM (2000)
-- Mitsumi 4x CDROM (1995)
-- LiteOn 16x DVD (2002)
Plus a whole bunch of CDROMs (Panasonic, Sony, various generics) in other boxes, that date back as far as 1994, and still work. Also, I've *never* seen ANY LiteOn unit go bad, and most clone dealers will say the same.
The only optical drives I've had die were three Yamaha CDRWs (see above), and one ancient Panasonic 2x (1994) that lost its drive belt at age 6, tho it still worked otherwise.
Consumer info by manufacturer? (Score:2)
And this makes me wonder... is there a site out there anywhere that tracks component lifetimes and RMA rates? Anyone know of a consumer reporting agency that deals with lifetimes and durability (instead of the typical advocacy based on features/power)?
I've found subjective claims on hardware [alsheating.com], for instance, but it would be nice to se
It's not just you (Score:2)
They seem to act up after about a year of use, probably dust and part wear. Typically 1 in 10 of movie DVD's will just flat out not work reguardless of what player is being used. Though in those cases I've always been able to rip the DVD to my computer to watch it from the har
MTBF is key (Score:2, Informative)
As a side note, anyone notice the HUGE difference between a caddy drive and tray drive? I hung on to caddies as long as I could just because the drives were bullet-proof.
You're not alone (Score:2)
On PC equipment, my very first CD drive (1x) started randomly not seeing CDs after a couple of years. The replacement (a 2x writer, Hi-Val, a rebagged OEN ve
bah (Score:5, Insightful)
I still have misc. 4x and 8x CDROM drive which work reliably and consistently.
I've had two CD burners die: a 24x/4x/2x and a 32x/8x/2x (I think).
In general, I don't use either for much. That's why we've got networks. I really don't want a non-electronic data transfer method which gets openly exposed to the outside world on a regular basis.
lite-on (Score:2)
Do what I do... (Score:2)
Right now I have a creative 6x DVD drive in my computer that's about 5 or more years old, and my normal DVD player for my TV is 4-5 (can't really remember, but more than 4 years for sure).
The ones that have died? One was by "JustLink", and the other one didn't have any markings at all as to the brand. Right now I have another burner made by Sony and it's going strong.
Buy cheap brands, get cheap products.
Best Way to have a long-lived Optical drive (Score:5, Informative)
Dust and pollen, smoke (a really bad one!) do all shorten the life of a drive, but the REAL kicker is cheap-ass mechanisms. Anyone can buy a $1 laser diode and build an optical pickup, but these cheapo diodes are, well cheap crap. Just like LEDs (see earlier
Beyond the cheap diodes used in so many cheap electronics, the mechanism design itself is important. a good laser pickup will be SEALED. Many cheapo pickups have the internal guts of the pickup exposed to air, that means not only is the objective lens going to collect dust, but so is the prism, colimating lens, mirror and photo-diode face. Thats no fewer than 5 extra surfaces to collect dust, pollen and smoke (Did I mention that smoke is REALLY bad?) Spend about twice what the cheap ones cost and you'll get a unit that lasts twice as long.
I have a Mitsubishi CD player that cost over $2500 in 1988, it STILL WORKS PERFECTLY! Not only that, but it reads CD-Rs just fine too! It sounds like crap 'cuz it's got first generation DACs, but the high quality laser diode and sealed mechanism have shown thier supperior resistence to the vageries of time. The 1x(!) CD drive for my SUN 3/110 (manf. date 1989!!!) also works perfectly, and that sucker probably went for almost $4000 new.
Cleaning and re-alignment are both do-able and can correct the sorts of problems outlined here, but unless there's solid engineering and quality parts behind the lens it's not worth bothering.
Another thing you get with a more expensive drive is better error correction, both HARDWARE and SOFTWARE. Many cheap drives have a set-screw for sled angle and tracking linearity, the best drives have self-adjusting mechanisms. Also, better drives will have wide-range variable power controllers for the laser instead of just a couple switched resistor pre-sets, this allows the drive to more accurately correct of the tranmissive and reflective changes in the surface of the disc. Even basic drives have pretty good "groove tracking" but being able to correct for optical variations is important too. Good error correction software is also important. A nice buffered oversampling drive should be ABLE to read through a pretty decent size scratch wihout issue. But drives with tinny buffers and poor re-read capability will choke on the smallest scuff.
P.S. RE: celaning discs... Those little brushes don't pack enough force to alter alignment on most drives, unless they are cheap-crap or spin up to 52x. The lens itself is on a floating electromangenticaly aligned sub-frame, so it can get bashed arround by those brushes quite a lot without problems. The real issue with cleaning discs is that they just don't do a very good job. They are OK preventative maintenance, but once the lens gets dirty enough to start effecting the drive's ability to read discs, you'll probably need to go in there with an Alcohol dampened q-tip. Also, smoke residue (Did I mention this one is the worst?) is quite sticky and will not redily come off without a little alcohol.
My 2-cents.
similar problems (Score:3, Informative)
I've had a bit of trouble with my set-top dvd players, but not much. Of course they are so cheap now I've managed to get 3 of them (not counting the ones in computers) so I can usually manage to get a disk to play.
I agree with others that the lens alighment seems to be the likely problem. Years ago I had a portable cd player that would skip all the time so i took it apart and there was a thing in there that looked like it had a screwdriver slot, so i put one in and twisted it. Put it back together and it worked a lot better from then on. I'm not sure I would reccomend taking it apart unless you didn't mind breaking it completely.
Re:similar problems (Score:2)
Hmm, I think it's more likely that thing you twisted (probably a tuning pot) controlled the laser's power output rather than it's alignment. Similar pots are in every CD/DVD-ROM but they're usually fairly hard to get to for obvious reasons.
From an old electronics repair tech.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, the number one and two killers of CD/DVD drives in my bench experience are physical shock that knocks the optics out of alignment, and using 'cleaning discs' that also fsck the optics alignment, with dust/smoke residue coming in a distant third.
On some of the older drives, there were also trimmer-adjustments for various parameters in the support cicuitry that could become out of spec due to age and other factors, as well as being barely in-spec from the factory to start with. These trimmers (if they exist) should only be tweaked if you have the proper test equipment (*good* oscilloscope, DMM, frequency counter, signal generator at a minimum) and tech manuals with values and procedures specified, otherwise you'll have junk quickly.
The bargain drives aren't really such a bargain, as the quality of components and initial alignment/adjustment and quality assurance are marginal at best. As has been the trend for some time now with most consumer electronics, it's easier and cheaper to just replace it rather than repair it.
I noticed a few posts mentioning using compressed/canned air cleaning. This is about the best method, but use caution. The pressure of a compressed-air blast at close range to the optic head can damage it also. The actual optic lens assembly floats on extremely fragile, tiny springs, and is very easy to damage with a strong blast of air.
Overall, the best ways to get maximum life out of your CD/DVD drives are to handle them like the fragile devices they are, don't use "cleaning discs", and by whatever method, try to keep dust/smoke/etc. away from the drives.
Hope that helps.
Strat
Plastic compoents (Score:2)
With technology changing so fast and prices for some units so low it's no wonder they're not built to last.
I would imagine the best CD/DVD drives are laptop units, since you can see the internals.
make someone else pay for it (Score:3, Interesting)
My solution has always been to warranty the product for a free one. Most products come with a pretty decent warranty, but most people don't bother to cash in on it.
Another good suggestion, buy the extended warranty that is offered by many retail outlets. Yeah yeah, I know that most of you will think that it's a scam, and they are just trying to get more money out of you; and you are right. It is a money maker for them, but not because they won't warranty, or because the product won't break, but because people forget about the extended warranty, or can't be bothered to use it. As long as you are smart, you will probably be able to cash in on it. The additional warranty typically runs for 3-5 years, and costs and additional 10-15% of the retail cost. This is well beyond the lifespan of most consumer grade electronics. Instead of thinking of it costing you 10% more, think of it as saving you 90% on the cost of a new one when it breaks in 2 years.
The benefit to you: when your next optical drive craps out, take it to Best Buy and they will give you a new one.
First Up... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, more on topic: I haven't had the problems you mention with DVDs other than with software based players. My first DVD player was a Creative Labs DXR-2 kit that had a hardware decoder that did an overlay on the computer desktop. It worked most of the time and was certainly cheaper than buying a stand alone DVD player at the time (1997). But, every so often my friend would bring a movie over and I wouldn't be able to play it. I only used this setup under Windows 95 on a Pentium 100, so I can't tell if it was OS related, driver related, software related or hardware related. I'll never know because I chucked the system.
My next DVD player was a software based player that came bundled with a cheap DVD drive ($79). It was the Cybervision PowerDVD. I used this for quite a few years on a Windows 98 system (P III 600). It worked OK for almost every disc. Occasionally it would crash in the middle of playback, but I am most certain that this was an OS issue due to the nature of the blue screen of death I would always get.
Soon after I started experimenting with Linux as a media PC OS in 2000, I tried Ogle and used that for quite some time with no problem. Then I moved to MPlayer which I only ran into a few discs that wouldn't play. (In retrospect, I think I didn't wait long enough for the disc to decrypt) And I finally got my full Linux based home theater PC working just a few months ago, this time choosing to go with the latest Xine (1.0 dontcha know?) which works SO well it even ignores region encoding and the on-the-fly PAL to NTSC conversion works just great on a Celeron 1.7 GHz. I can't wait to check out the new series of Doctor Who on DVD when BBC releases it this summer/fall.
I've never had a standalone DVD player because I think until the past year or two, they've been too expensive for what they do. The new $40 jobs are more on par with what the player should cost, but the quality is pretty low and you still don't get much of a decent feature set. I'm still wondering why no one puts an ethernet jack on a DVD player and the ability to stream the DVD with live transcoding so that you can watch discs on any device that is networked. Oh well... like the RIAA, the MPAA will never "get it".
Re:the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
This was marked as flamebait, and it may well have been intended that way.
However, the reason they're made in China is because China is dirt-cheap to manufacture in.
They may well be capable of producing better quality drives, but that would require more quality testing (and so on) which is going to add to the price. And the consumer has shown that, everything else being equal, they will go for the cheaper drive.
I don't know how China would stack up if quality were a bigger factor, because I don't know the level of skills required, how many people with the necessary skills live in China, and so on.
In other words, would the cost of (increased) QA in Chinese-built goods be as proportionately cheap as the basic manufacturing cost in China?
Would it be worthwhile training people, or do enough people with the necessary skills (at the right price) live in China? Or would it make more sense to manufacture elsewhere?
Truth be told, I don't know; this is a can of worms. What I do know:-
(1) China is very cheap to manufacture in, and
(2) Long-term or even general quality/QA is far less important than the manufacturing (and hence retail) cost.
As I said, if (2) changed, it's totally unclear whether China would be a good bet or not. I suspect it might still be, but with a far narrower margin of competitiveness to its rivals. But (2) hasn't changed; so the goods with the lowest QA are produced in the country with the lowest manufacturing cost. Doesn't mean they aren't capable of better, it means that the market would prefer "cheaper" to "better".
Re:It's the speed... (Score:2)
Re:Viva Tape! (Score:2)
I'm impressed you haven't ruined the heads on the VCR by doing that...
Of course, like you said, it degrades more gracefully, and what does it matter if the kids watch a movie with some snow in it every now and again?
Re:CD Drive Failures (Score:2)
I have an HP zd7000 laptop, with a 3.2 GHz P4. And I do Folding @ Home when I'm not playing games or doing 3D rendering (in other words, 100% CPU time nearly all the time). I went through two DVD-ROM/CD-RW drives until I started cooling the thing better- I rigged up an apparatus using a laptop cooling pad to push cool air under the laptop, instead of suck air out from under it (the fan intakes are on the bottom of the laptop). I haven't had a drive die on me yet.
Re:Hate (Score:2)