CD drive repair

[The Medway Handyman]

Failed alas, navigated to the drive but it came up empty. Thanks though.

[ARWadsworth]

Bin it and replace it with a DVD player.

[Spamlet]

Oh well, it was a bit of a long shot; guess my system must be somehow unique.

Anyhow, before you bin the drive (and it really is worth getting a modern all in one dvdrw/cdrw etc drive - they are very cheap compared to the ones that go with the tv!), try opening the tower and disconnecting the drive. Then restart without the drive. Let it finish updating, then shut down, open up, reconnect the drive and power up again. Then it should tell you it has found new hardware, and, with any luck might clear your glitch when it reinstalls.

S

[The Medway Handyman]

For £17 I might as well get the super dooper jobby.

Cheers, but I'll go for the turbo nutter one :-)

I'm assuming I take the back or side off and it just unbolts?

[John Donne]

-- John Donne

[The Natural Philosopher]

More or less yes. Sometimes you need to take a cradle out before you can remove the drives. Take photos of all cables etc. so if you have to unplug everything, you know how it all goes back together.

[Andy Burns]

Yeah, shutdown machine and remove mains lead, remove power and data cables from CD drive (if unsure take a quick photo of which way they go), undo screws on side of drive (or if it no screws slide the relevant quick-release clamp etc).

Check the master/slave/cable select jumpers on old and new drives, you want the new one set for the same option (which might be different physical positions from one drive to another)

re-assembly is the reverse ...

[John Rumm]

Indeed, sorry wrong link. IDE:

[John]

That is good advice and is worth a try.

[Bob Eager]

Make sure you set the jumper the same on the new one. Usually it's Slave but depending on the machine's configuration it might be Master. Jumpers on the back edge, usually there's engraving on the top for MA, SL or CS. Just set the same as the old one.

(if it's SATA, none of this is necessary)

[John Rumm]

Basically yup.

Depending on the tower it may have two separate sides or one overall "lid" with sides and top in one bit.

There will be up to 4 screws holding it into the drive bay - you will probably need to get at both sides of the bay to get to them.

There will typically be two cables plugged into the back of the drive - one power one data. Both are polarised and so will only fit one way round. On an old PC there may be a thin audio lead as well. You can move this to the new drive if there is a matching socket for it. Else just unplug it at the other end and remove it.

With SATA drives there is no configuration to do - just plug the thin data cable into the motherboard socket at one end and drive at the other. Plug in the power and off it goes.

With IDE drives you will need to check the position of the master / slave jumper. If the existing drive is the only drive on the ribbon cable, then configure the new drive as master. If it shares its cable with another drive (optical or hard drive) then set it to the same as the one you are removing. Typically the jumper has one of three possible positions - master, slave and cable select (or CS). They usually come set to master or CS.

Once in place and the case is back together it should be recognised by windows. It may give it a different drive letter to the one it had before - this is especially true if there was a gap in the lettering - say if the hard drive was C: and the CD ROM was R:. To reset the original letter, right click on My Computer and select Manage. Then disk Management. Then right click the drive in question on the ledt (ir will say something like "DVD (L:) No media" (where L is the currently assigned letter). Chose "change driver letter and path" from the menu and use the drop down to select you preferred drive letter.

[Dave]

Did a liberal spray of WD 40 not sort it?

Dave

[Dave Liquorice]

There is some requirement for a single drive to be connected to a particular connector on the cable. I *think* you connect a drive configured as master to the connector closest to the motherboard as slave to the end and it doesn't matter with cable select, ish that is. If you have a hard drive and CD drive on one cable and both set to cable select, it considered better to ensure the CD is a slave so it should be on the end of the cable.

[robgraham]

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D\

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0|

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0|

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D/

Hey you learn something new everyday - thanks for that spiel about the Disc Manager, John. Didn't know that one and it has solved a problem I've lived with for some time where one of the DVD drives had somehow changed it's drive name and letter, and I didn't know how to get it back.

I hope that TMH has got sufficient guidance that I can ask John R a question that came out of running the Disc Manager - the main drive has 2 NTFS partitions C & D, but the Manager is showing also two FAT partitions - a 47MB one called EISA Configuration and a 2.7GB (actually FAT32) called Unknown Partition; OK on a 150GB drive these are small beer but tidiness is tidiness and how do I achieve that, if worth it ? !

Rob

[Pete Zahut]

Just a guess but are you running a computer that came with a set of 'recovery discs' or a computer such as Acer who have a utility for you to create a set of recovery discs as a one-off operation?

If so, the recovery discs will most likely work in conjunction with either or both of those partitions, should you need to restore your machine to factory settings. NB - this is a return to the way it was when it came off the production line at the factory, before you bought it, and not just a "winding back of the clock a few days" that you can do from System Restore within Windows.

NB - DO NOT delete or otherwise mess with these two partitions unless you specifically know that they are nothing to do with factory reset or something else that you cannot afford to lose.

[Jeff Gaines]

A single drive should be connected to the furthermost connector from the mobo to avoid wave reflections, whatever they are. With 80 core connectors the master is furthest from the mobo connector and slave nearest.

[robgraham]

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D\

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D/

Thanks Pete - it's a Dell Dimension 5000 (probably should have said that and that it's XP). In the end it is something I found that puzzled me and can perfectly well remain unchanged. I got the machine from my daughter's partner and it could also be something that he set up.

[Dave Liquorice]

That's what the engineer in me told me to do when I was shifting drives about but it didn't work or did but things had the wrong drive letters assigned by the BIOS.

I was using 40 wire cable... that is different master is middle, sometimes, it's a bit of mine field TBH.

Hopefully TMH's drives are SATA or using 80 core ribbon cable which makes life a lot simpler.

[Robin]

The smaller partition is (from memory so almost certainly) Dell's diagnostics. You can run these at bootup using F12. See eg Dell's guidance for the Dimension 5000

agree the other partition will be for you to Restore the system to the way it shipped. Not a good idea unless you want to spend many a happy hour reinstalling software, service packs etc But worth keeping unless you are desperate for disk space.

[robgraham]

Many thanks, Robin. I take it then that this suggestion from 'a friend' is incorrect "All NTFS formatted drives still require to have a FAT 16/32 partition (or 2) to facilitate boot-up. Bios's can't read NTFS because it is requires the OS (Windows or otherwise) to be loaded first. " ??

Rob