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rickas123

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Jan 23, 2012
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I'm trying to trouble shoot a problem for my church. We use a multi bay dvd burner to make copies of Sunday Sermons for parishoners who cannot make it to that days service. recently a problem with this system surfaced when we couldn't open the doors manually by pushing the button on the front of most of the drives. the master bay works and one other writer will open, but the other ten won't. If there is a disk in the bay and it finishes its burn it will open at the end of the burn, but otherwise will not open. I find it unusual that this problem would affect so many drives simultaneously, and at first I thought it might be the controller card for the system, but I took each of the malfunctioning drives out and plugged them into another system with the same problem replicated. I'm begining to think that the system might have taken a power hit and the drives are bad and need replacing, but I am open to other less costly solutions if anybody has any other ideas. This sysem is being used by a small community church with limited funds so I am trying to keep the costs down. thank you.
 
Solution
If the pushbutton won't open the drives even when they're installed in another computer then it's clearly a problem with the drives. Perhaps a bit of a mystery as to why, but unfortunately facts are facts.

If that's the case, then I think you have three or four options:

1) Buy new drives. Expensive, but definitive.

2) Use the paper-clip technique to open the drive trays. Awkward, but free and it gets the job done.

3) See if you can find anyone to repair the drives. May not be any cheaper than new drives, and no guarantee of success.

4) Open the drives up yourself and tinker with them to see if there's a way to fix them. You might be lucky and see an obvious problem like a burned circuit trace that you can jumper with a...
If the pushbutton won't open the drives even when they're installed in another computer then it's clearly a problem with the drives. Perhaps a bit of a mystery as to why, but unfortunately facts are facts.

If that's the case, then I think you have three or four options:

1) Buy new drives. Expensive, but definitive.

2) Use the paper-clip technique to open the drive trays. Awkward, but free and it gets the job done.

3) See if you can find anyone to repair the drives. May not be any cheaper than new drives, and no guarantee of success.

4) Open the drives up yourself and tinker with them to see if there's a way to fix them. You might be lucky and see an obvious problem like a burned circuit trace that you can jumper with a wire. Or if you manually short the leads going to the button and the tray opens then you might be able to replace it the button with something else. Cheap, but labour intensive and no guarantee of success.

Something to keep in mind is that the lasers in burners have a limited life span. If these drives have been in service for a few years then they may be nearing the end of their life anyway. In that case investing more money in them may not be a good idea.
 
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