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Short Lifetimes of Optical Drives?
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?"
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?"
bad luck. sorry man. mine has been working since 1840.
Stop using a cleaner disc.
I think part of the original poster's problem is that the CD/DVD standards change subtley over the years without anyone really noticing. My toshiba laptop can't record on 700MB CDs for example. I don't think the problem will be solved until the industry is more forthright about versioning on media and drives.
Well I guess this is from _the_ department :P
They're so cheap these days (and I do mean cheap...plastic gears suck), it's hardly worth the trouble to try and repair them. One exception might be high-end jukebox type players, but for single-disc players I'll typically just buy a new one.
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...
Pollen? Smokers? I've got an African Grey parrot, they shed a talc like substance that fairly covers everything in his room. You might consider setting up your computer with filtration and airflow so that it pushes filtered air out past the drive, rather than pulling unfiltered air past it towards the back of the machine.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I've been through 4 CD drives in the last 2 years and this is only counting my personal hardware. 3 of these drives were burners, one of them a Plextor SCSI drive. From what I hear this seems to be quite common and the burners are especially likely to go bad. At least prices have gone down so much now that they are pretty much disposable. Hell, it practically costs more to buy a spindle of blank DVDs than it does to buy the DVD burner itself. Reminds me of the situation with printers and ink.
DVD is a mess. Between incompatible formats and cheap and nasty players, I've stopped trying to use DVD at all.
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.
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Uh... besides scratches, there's another pretty important thing called alignment. Does DVD cleaner disk refer to those stupid discs with a little brush on them? If so, what are you thinking? I've never understood how those things could remain on the market. Spinning a little brush at high speed and letting it hit the lens - that has to be incredibly great for its alignment... Sure it might clean it, but it's bound to have some effect.
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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?
Electric Monkey Pants
How hard do you PUSH those things? The old 2x SCSI CD Caddy drive in my computer from 1994 still works fine. All the media it comes with still works great too. All I can guess is maybe you live in a high humidty or extremely dusty/dirty house. My house is fairly clean, and I have never had optical drive problems. Don't just clean them out when they break, constantly clean them (if it is the dust/dirt problem) with air. Otherwise I can just suggest you be a little nicer to them and maybe they will be a little nicer to you.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
I have about a 60% success rate with hard disks working more than a year, my wireless router lasted just past one year. My DVD player from 1998 or so is about to go in the trash because it does not recognize enough disks to be worthwhile.
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.
1. Don't buy any more Dells.
2. Don't use cleaner discs.
3. If your disks get scratched, clean them with toothpaste. (make sure to clean the toothpaste afterwards.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Two short stories:
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.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
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.
1) Don't use cleaner disks that have the little brushes; they can knock the head out of alignment. As a last-ditch for a dead drive, you might try one of the cleaner PADS, but even so that is not something to do with a working drive.
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.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The real problem is that they are all made in China
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".
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I only recently purchased a DVD player. Like, in the last month.
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.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Is to pay a lot of money for it.
/. article from today) laser diodes dim over time, cheap diodes dim faster, and often have a lower voltage bias set because they can't handle as much power. The lower initial voltage makes them go out that much faster.
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.
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It looked so simple, with no disassembly required.
I worked for many years (over 30 years..saw the change to solid-state from vacuum-tubes) as an electronics repair tech on everything from consumer electronics to industrial automation to aircraft avionics.
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
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
It is also a good idea to take a look around in the area it will be in. Is there a lot of dust/dirt/other around it? In the time I have been using dvds/cd players I have a total of 2 stop working. Both of those were physical mechanical problems (plastic bits broke). That is also over a period of 15 or so years.
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. Many foods like to flake apart leaving bits of it behind. Drink is a disaster waiting to happen. You probably can even enforce this policy. What happens when that equipment stops working? You stop working. Not good is it?
Also many times a player is not even dirty. Some of the tolerances on the newer media is quite small. They are usually out of alignment. Your 'cleaner' is probably wacking the lense back into place. You are probably scratching that same lense with those 'cleaner discs'.
The BEST way to clean one (if you so need to) is to take it apart and use some rubing alcohol on a qtip on the lense. Even that is prone to scratching the lense. Usually blowing it out with air is best.
Why do consoles tend to 'break' so offten? It is simple. People keep them on the floor. Many of the newer ones have fans that help snork up the little bits of dust/dander/hairs that are in the carpet. They also tend to be moved around a bit 'get that thing off the floor NOW so I can clean' sort of things. Usually the BEST way to clean them is to open them up and take a can of compressed air to them. This is also true with computers. Go into someones house and where is the computer. Next to their feet. They were just outside in the yard. Compressed air is the best really. If you end up having to do many of these you can even buy a compressor to blow the dirt out instead of buying cans all the time.
Also talk to your cleaning crew. Have them mop or vacume more often. If you are busting drives all the time. Buy them a better vacume if there is carpet.
The code above executes "rm -rf /".