combo drive getting flaky

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thunderpoitthunderpoit
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
my combo drive seems to only work when it wants to it seems. i have a QS 867, and have had frequent problems with the combo drive, just none like this.



about half a year after i got it, the combo drive decided to stop burning cd's, it would think my media was bad, so i took it in, and apple replaced it for me. about 5 months later, just before my warranty went out, i needed it to be replaced again for the same issue. about 4 months ago, the problem came back, but i was no longer under warranty and there was no way i was going to pay 600$(!) for a new combo drive, so i went and got an external lacie to burn cd's w/, as my combo was still working great as a dvd/cdrom drive.



now, this week, it decided to have another problem, it no longer wants to read disks. sometimes it will, most of the time it wont, and i cant get it to read a dvd for shit.



do i have some seriously bad hardware here? has anyone else w/ a QS seen any problems like this? how much can i get a decent dvd/cdrom drive for?



edit-are most cd/dvdrom drives universal? like if i were to go out and buy this, would it work w/ no issues in my mac?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    jimdreamworxjimdreamworx Posts: 1,098member
    We have a number of boxes like that where the combo drive has failed at our business. And since we AppleCare all the boxes, we noticed the failure happening in the middle of year two. Is it just me or are Macs becoming lower in quality that buying AppleCare is a necessity nowadays? (As opposed to the types you could buy a few years back that would never fail if you got out of the first year okay.)



    But for older Macs out of AppleCare, that we still use that have had drive failures, we have successfully replaced the CD/DVD drives with third-party options that are based on the same stuff Apple uses. Just make sure that the jumpers are set properly (ie. similar to the one you are taking out) as they are usually set in a fashion for the Wintel purchaser.



    In your example from Best Buy, you show a Pioneer, which is something Apple includes stock on their computers, so therefore OS X does support it well. I think the only place where you may have an issue with support is with the iDVD application because Apple specifically wrote it to not support third-party equipment (to encourage you to buy Final Cut / Express, I guess, as those applications do).



    You mentioned you had an external drive. What we have done is remove the external drives from their cases (laCie drives as well, but probably much older than what you have) and directly connect them into the Mac replacing bad drives. Usually this speeds things up, as you are no longer going through the Firewire-IDE adapter built into the external case.



    As always, be careful when mucking around...
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  • Reply 2 of 7
    thunderpoitthunderpoit Posts: 709member
    dammit, thats what i was afraid of. i thought for a few seconds about putting the lacie drive internal, but i would rather have a working dvd/cdrom drive. i doubt i would get a speed benefit from putting it internal, i already can write w/ no issues at 52x, and ive had max transfer rates of 18mb/sec. so i think im good there.



    so if i got the pioneer, it would work just fine w/ no issues at all?
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  • Reply 3 of 7
    jimdreamworxjimdreamworx Posts: 1,098member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ThunderPoit



    so if i got the pioneer, it would work just fine w/ no issues at all?



    I haven't bought the model you specify (in fact, I looked at the page agin hoping to find a Pioneer part number, but no luck), but other models have worked for us for burning data (or in my case, custom audio mixes via iTunes). We don't use iDVD, so I can't say anything about that - but then again, looking at the model you show it is DVD-ROM, so burning DVDs appears not be an issue.



    Also, if you are interested in a DVD-ROM only, check out any used Apple stores in your area. Remember that the G4 graphites came with DVD-ROMs, and many dealers swap those things out because people want CD-RW. You might get a cheap, Apple drive that way, but it only does reads.
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  • Reply 4 of 7
    thunderpoitthunderpoit Posts: 709member
    i have no need to burn a dvd, dont have a vid cam, and i dont deal w/ that much data, if i do, i use my ipod all i want is a working dvdrom and a working cdrw.
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  • Reply 5 of 7
    thunderpoitthunderpoit Posts: 709member
    i was able to find a data sheet on that model from pioneer, it is model dvd-120. will almost any drive work plug and play w/ a mac or do i need to look for somthing specific?



    data sheet is here.
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  • Reply 6 of 7
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    I have Toshiba Combo drive that I installed (originally came with CDROM drive) a couple years back and it has performed flawlessly for the most part. My recommendation if you plan to keep the QS around for a while, is to go here and check out the optical drive database.



    There are tons of user reviews for all of the more popular brands and models, so you should find one that will work well in your system. That's how I found mine.



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  • Reply 7 of 7
    gobble gobblegobble gobble Posts: 615member
    Have you tried cleaning the Combo drive? For a couple of dollars you can get a cleaning CD with a little brush on it that will wipe off the lens of the drive. That solved a problem I was having with my Superdrive, which sounds similar to your Combo drive problem.
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