I’m having the worst luck in the world with my drives.
First, my old trusty HP CD-RW dies. Took the opportunity to go with a DVD Writer.
That was about 6 months ago.
So I get a BenQ DW1640. That worked great. Then one Monday, nothing would play. I take the Audio CD out (the same one still in from the previous day, and worked fine), and put another one in.
It made a horrible grinding/clicking sound as it tried to spin up, and would simply give up.
After asking around on IRC what my next drive should be, I got a NEC 3550A.
This drive worked great… for about a week. I couldn’t figure it out, a song would play good for maybe 30 seconds (sometimes more/less).
I touched the top of the drive, and it was hot. Not warm, hot. It was on the edge of burn-the-back-of-your-hand hot.
Keep in mind, I don’t run this computer with a cover. If I put a cover over this case, it would turn into an oven and fry everything. The case is an ancient, bulky ATX case from some Pentium II.
Please, don’t tell me I need proper a proper case/cooling :>
Back on topic.
I suspected overheating at first, but just don’t understand why.
I plopped a desktop fan directly over the drive and blasted it as Windows tried to play from the CD. As seconds progressed, the CD could finally be read and a song would play, but would skip like mad. Giving it a minute, the entire CD could be played in full without any problems, as long as the fan was blasting air onto the drive.
OK, overheating likely the cause. I decide to try another NEC, the recently released 4570A, which had to come all the way from the UK (Royal Mail is royally slow).
Guess what? Within minutes, this bugger started the exact same problem, and it’s not until I get cold air blasting on it that it starts working.
Needless to say, I’m super pissed at NEC atm. I never even knew a drive could act this way when there’s heat. I never even knew these drives could overheat, just playing an Audio CD!
Oddly enough, I was able to get 2-3 decent DVD rips/burns without the fan over the drive.
I’m at a loss, desperately typing this at 6am in the morning, without any prior sleep.
Quick System Specs:
Enermax 450 Watt PSU
P4 3.0 Ghz w/ HT
512x2 DDR400 @ Dual Channel
Gigabyte 8knxp Rev2.0 mobo
80-Pin/80-Conductor IDE Cable on Secondary Master.
Yes, DMA is enabled and works.
WinXP Pro SP2
Anyone have ideas to offer, or maybe a different drive to try?
Regards,
myrdd1n