Hi guys, got a strange one for you here. I've been using my Pioneer DVR-215 SATA DVD-RW drive now for nearly a year. It's never given me any problems up until now. Just recently, I've been increasing my FLAC collection and as a result, the drive is being used quite heavily. A moment ago, I noticed that whilst ripping an audio CD, EAC had locked up and no progress was being made on the rip. I turned down the music I had playing through foobar and heard the unit seeking quite erratically. Eventually, I shut down EAC via the task manager as it wouldn't stop seeking and had locked the drive, such that I couldn't open it (a normal feature of EAC, when running). Upon a reboot I noticed that it no longer recognises audio cds at all anymore. It simply seeks for a while and then opens the tray and says "please insert a disc". A reboot into Ubuntu shows that the problem appears to reside in the drive (rather than the OS) as it still persists. Further investigation reveals something even stranger: It flatly refuses to recognise ANY CD (data, audio, etc) but behaves completely normally with DVDs (games, movies, data etc). Anybody experienced something similar? I've tried the latest firmware but it's already installed and as such, won't let me. EDIT: Oh, okay, a bit of further investigation shows that most units use a different laser for each format. Looks like the CD laser is toast then huh?
Yup, your CD laser is toast tbh. Which is a real shame, because it means buying a new drive... On the subject of DVD-RW's, I've had two Pioneer DVR-111's for about 14 months now, and they're on the verge of needing replacing (one refuses to read DVD video's for example). I'm a bit miffed because the last drives I bought (Samsung's), lasted for about 3-4 years without needing any replacement, and are still going strong (if a little noisily) in a mate's PC, about 5 years after I bought them... :\
I suppose a replacement drive isn't the end of the world, though I would've liked to get a little more than a year out of it tbh. Maybe Pioneer DVD drives are a bit naff? For £16 though, I'll probably replace it with the same. The real pain in the neck is ripping all sorts (including parts of 2 water loops) out of my case to get to it. Whilst that might sound silly, things are a little complicated in my case. I might take a few pics of me reassembling it and turn it into a mini project log. Any excuse eh?
