Hi all,
I’m just now getting around to upgrade my laptop DVD drive and apparently most drives don’t fit most laptops. From what I’ve gleaned from googling certain computer brands will mate well with certain drive manufacturers and the trick I think is to find what you’ve got and match it .
But my question is: What makes the difference? If the connector in the back of the drive is the same and the shape of the drive is compatible. What is it about the hardware that makes it unable to work with ANY laptop given the previous conditions?
Such a situation would never come up with a desktop. The drive I purchased would allow power to the drive, but the motherboard refused to recognize that a drive was there. I suspect possibly something with the BIOS version, because it’s definitely not
a driver issue.
The drive connector is typically the same, and the drive will most likely fit.
What you’ll find most of the time is a difference in the shape of the front tray plate, which may or may not matter.
My compaq laptop currently has a Dell DVD burner in it, but due to the shape of the tray plate I have gaps where the bezel should be flush. Not a big deal for me.
It also helps that it was a ‘spare’ part, so there’s nothing lost if it didn’t work. YMMV
Most laptop external drives consist of a sled in which the actual drive is mounted. The drive itself is relatively standard in size. The sled contains the connector that interfaces with the laptop and the drive. The external connector on the sled is generally proprietary in its alignment and shape, while the internal connector is standard.
The trouble comes in finding a drive that fits into the sled exactly and is capable of having the bezel from the old drive attached to the new one. How much you want to put into this last part depends on how “pretty” you want the end result to be.
Jumpers huh?
Well, I looked all over the drive, I don’t think all (laptop)drives have these. There may be something software/firmware-wise that you can do with this, but the contrast is pretty apparent.
The drive that came with the system is instantly recognized while the drive I ordered (with no compatibility research) fails at boot-up “IDE2 failed” “retry OR boot” … Sorry, I just don’t see any jumpers anywhere; maybe just certain brands.
I was going to create a new topic, but really I’m on the same issue so I’ve decided to just “wake this one up again” .
I’m still in the process of trying to upgrade my dvd-rom drive to a dvd-rw drive. My wife has the more posh system that has this drive so I took hers out and did a search online for the exact same model number. I ordered this and have installed it only to find the same issue. Btw, when I installed her drive into my machine it worked fine.
I then began scrutinizing things" same model drive, fw version is the same, however the HW (hardware?) number is 1.01 instead of 1.00. … am I screwed? Is there nothing I can do about this?
Unlike the other drive I ordered, this one shows up in both “my computer” and “device manager”. When I check the driver it shows as “working properly”. Everything appears ok until I try to actually u-se the thing then I get an I/O error dialog box.
When I tried using the “add new hardware” option in control panel my machine explains to me that only one device at a time can be added and that currently it is in the process of doing this and kindly try back later… grrr
Not to mention when I “resume” the machine from hibernation I have to wait everytime for it to try and recognize this drive and eventually tell me IDE2 failed…
I’ve tried going to the Toshiba site and updating the firmware for this, but it does nothing.
Pardon my french, but why the hell is this so difficult? What am I missing?
How many IDE buses does the laptop have? If the stock optical drive is set as the slave on the same bus as the hard drive, your replacement drive will also have to be set as a slave. Your I/O errors could be a result of the replacement drive set to master.
Hmm, I’ve done some looking Cleophus however how about you tell me what I’m looking for with this.
I’m seeing two IDE choices in device manager (primary and secondary) within the properties of each is a device 0 and a device 1 and a few drop-down boxes ( not a highly configurable set of options available ).
So I’m not seeing where I am able to set something as master or slave.
Master and slave are set on the device itself with jumpers, which, on 50-pin laptop connectors, is included in the connector. What’s probably happening here is the cable is not properly setting the master/slave setting. This is still assuming your laptop puts the optical drive and HD on the same bus, but this conclusion is supported by how Device Manager lists the drives.
It will be helpful to know whether the laptop is designed to be a simple master/slave setup or if the bus is a cable select setup. Note that it is theoretically possible for the replacement drive to be hard-locked to a particular setting, either in firmware or soldered in on the controller board.
What is the laptop’s and replacement drive’s model and brand?
(What’s cable select? There are three possible IDE settings, master/slave as you already know, and a third one called cable select. Cable select is a way of configuring the master/slave attribute based on the physical positioning of the drives on the IDE cable, but it only works with a cable select IDE cable, and all devices on the bus must be set to cable select.)
AHA- I see where we are miscommunicating Cleophus- What I am refering to (and should have re-mentioned) is that this drive is a slim-style one for a laptop specifically a Toshiba Satellite M35-S320. My wife owns one that looks identical to this only it is a M35-S456 with a few upgraded features.
The settings must definitely be configured via firmware, because there are no physical jumpers on this type of drive.
From what I’ve gathered the machine is listing my HDD on a separate IDE from the DVD drive. Strangely enough, the computer “remembers” both drives setting them on separate IRQs but listing both, no matter which drive is presently installed. However they don’t appear to be conflicting with each other (phantom drive or not).
The DVD drive I’m trying to install is a UJ-820B which is exactly what my wife has- funnily enough when I used a drive identifier program called Nero Info tool it listed my drive in question as a UJ-820S.
Now I seem to have found firmware for both models, but I have to question now what I should believe, what is printed on the drive itself or what info tool is telling me it is.
Btw- I’m quite sure this is all firmware related b/c I had my wife’s drive to try out in this machine and surprise,surprise it comes up like a winner with no “IDE2 failed” issues.
