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Extending the Life of EIDE CDRW's

E

evergreen96

Senior member
Moderators and Administrators:

I not sure it it okay to link to another forum but I though would be interested to anyone who owns a CDR or CDRW

I came across a interest fact that I think everyone in the anandtech members who be interested in knowing

YOu can extend the life of IDE CDRW. Here is an excerpt:
"As most of you already know, CDRW drive lasers stay on as long as your system is turned
on regardless of using the CDRW. Most people DON'T burn CD's most of the time their
computer is on... The laser on CDRW's are kinda like a light bulb, it gets weaker and
weaker as times goes by and the life expectancy of the device gets shorter and the
chances of write errors due to laser beam getting weaker increases. I made a power
switch for my EIDE CDRW getting the idea from SCSI external CDRW drives. Now you can
just turn your CDRW on ONLY when NEEDED"

Here is the link to the article
http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/Forum2/HTML/009411.html

 
I certainly would not have believed an optical drive's laser stays on all the time, even at a reduced power level. But this guy seems to know what he's talking about, and I haven't researched it myself...never heard it mentioned before, though. One thing that is overlooked is that optical drives, as all electronics, fail gradually for a number of reasons. Electrolytic capacitors dry out, semiconductors degrade over time, etc. It's difficult to speculate what percentage of failures may be attributed to which failure mode, though the manufacturer's themselves keep statistics for tracking reliability. Anybody here work for Plextor, Yamaha, Ricoh, or Sanyo? 🙂

Nonetheless, I agree fully with keeping any electronic device powered down if it is not going to be used within a reasonable time frame. I may burn 15 CD's one day and then not burn another for three or four days, during which time the CD writer is turned off. "Reasonable" in the judgment of the user, because some devices (power semiconductors in particular) are gradually degraded by thermal cycling...the thermal expansion and contraction of heating and cooling. So don't burn a CD, turn your writer off, and then turn it on again in an hour.

And let's not forget that electronics reliability is affected by a high "infant mortality" rate. If it works the moment you pull it out of the box, chances are it's going to last throughout the warranty period. Don't anyone worry about any of this too much. If you haven't agonized over this sort of thing before, now's not the time to start, it's been going on behind your back, so to speak, for years now. Most of us keep our systems on 24 hours a day and they continue to work well beyond their useful technological lives. It's the job of the engineers who design our components to worry about these things. Trust me, they do indeed agonize over these little details, because their success and the success of their company depends on it.

Best regards,
Floyd
 
Would the laser stay on if the tray is open? I would assume that it would turn off, but I don't know for sure.
 
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