DVD Drive click of death...HEEEELPPP

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Xenu
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DVD Drive click of death...HEEEELPPP

Postby Xenu » Wed Feb 01, 2006 2:59 pm

OK, long story short. About two weeks ago, my DVD recorder started occasionally making sharp "clicking" noises. These "clicking" noises corresponded with the disc currently inserted jumping slightly out of the tray, gouging it in the process. Needless to say, this isn't something I was thrlled with,m and I immediately decommissioned the drive and bought a new one.

Except now, my *other* DVD drive (a Liteon) has done the exact same thing.

I couldn't find a goddamn thing about this on the net. What could be causing this? Why the hell is it happening? How do I get it to stop?
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Postby lukpac » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:25 pm

How could you tell it was "jumping out of the tray"?
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby Xenu » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:30 pm

When I open the drive up after one of these clicks, the disc is frequently not quite "in" the tray. Not always. THis is really freaking me out...there doesn't seem to be any pattern to it, and I can't understand why both drives are now doing it.
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Postby Rspaight » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:35 pm

Hmmmm. Power supply? Bad IDE cable? Power cable?

If both drives were connected to the same IDE/power connectors, changing those would be a worthwhile thing to try.

Ryan
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Postby lukpac » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:37 pm

That's odd, but I'm guessing it has something to do with the way the discs are ejected, as when the discs are "in drive" they should be held in place by two clamps. The disc "floats" and only is in/on the tray on insert and ejection.
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby Phil Elliott » Wed Feb 01, 2006 5:02 pm

Other than the clicking noises, is there any excessive vibration/humming noises, as though the disc is off centre? Does it do this with most/all of your discs, or with only a handful?

Two reasons why I ask - the first is real, the second just a theory.

1) Once I was extracting audio with a Yamaha F1 drive, and was puzzled by the loud buzzing noise coming from the drive. It seemed like the drawer was rattling in sympathy with (what I assumed) was an off-centred disc, so I put my hand on the drawer, just out of curiosity you understand, to see if it damped it. There was a loud crunch, then dead silence. By putting my hand on the drawer, I managed to get the disc to bounce off the inside of the drawer, catapulting it backwards several inches while still spinning. The drawer opened ok, but the wrong part of the disc remained jammed between the central hub and the floating puck. The disc was fucked.

You may be experiencing the same thing, but it's hard to say for sure. I can't think of a sensible way of finding out, other than taking it apart and watching it in action. The risky way would be to spin a disc you aren't bothered with at the lowest speed possible, and put your hand on the drawer to listen for scraping noises. At low speed I would hope the worst you can do is stop it spinning... but then again ...

FWIW, Yamaha released a firmware that limited audio extraction to 24x, unless it was defeated by holding the drawer button down. Since I decommisioned the PC the Yamaha was in, I'm burning discs ok with my Pioneer DVD writer - which is fixed at 32x (CAV I guess). It's never chewed a disc ... but then I no longer put my hand on the drawer.

And now ...

2) I'm wondering if the thickness of the disc comes into play. If the disc is on the thin side, excessive vibration might cause the puck to scrape itself against the cradle holding it. Once a scrape occurs, I would imagined the disc would be allowed to rattle for a brief moment. Just a thought.
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Postby Xenu » Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:15 pm

It's happened to two kinds of discs: pressed and burned DVDs. It also doesn't happen during anything like DAE. Basically, I'll have a DVD in the drive (which has been accessed OK), it'll start to spin up for some reason--going into explorer, who knows--and suddenly CRUNCH. Eject, and there'll be a circle scuff (the bad kind, in otherw ords) etched into the bottom of the disc.

I was thinking IDE cable too, but how could that have anything to do with it, really? Data transfer errors, yes, but physical shit like this?

I'm going to make sure everything's snug tonight in any case
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Postby Rspaight » Wed Feb 01, 2006 8:28 pm

I was thinking IDE cable too, but how could that have anything to do with it, really? Data transfer errors, yes, but physical shit like this?


I was thinking along the lines of a short that would cause the motor/clamp to do really unexpected things.

If it only happens with DVDs, though... Weird.

Ryan
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Postby Xenu » Thu Feb 02, 2006 2:00 am

Well, it hasn't happened with CDs, but that doesn't mean it won't.

I just checked, and everything was nice and snug. I was going to order a new drive, but as I haven't been able to really pin down the cause...
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"Fuckin' Koreans" - Reno 911