Advice on Vostro 1700 optical drive replacement.

Hello everyone,

I need to replace the PBDS DS-8W1P (part MR467) optical drive in my Vostro 1700 laptop. Is there any reason why I can't swap it for an off-the-shelf Liteon 8A1P-021C drive (or any other slimline drive), rather than go hunting through ebay for a drive with the right part number? I have the bezel and bracket from the old drive, so I'm hoping it's just a case of swapping them over.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading,

Lownes

 

If the interface and form factor are the same for both drives, there's no reason this shouldn't work. My only concern would be the bezel not fitting the new drive, but maybe that's standardized a lot better these days...

 

The only possible problem with using the Liteon burner is a master / slave / cable select conflict which can happen if the optical drive shares the same IDE channel as the HDD (which probably happens on 10 to 20% of notebooks). You can check for this by looking at the IDE channels in Device Manager. Normally the HDD is on one channel with a transfer mode of UDMA-5 while the optical drive is on the other channel with a transfer mode of UDMA-2. If these are the only two IDE devices and are on separate channels then any 12.5mm thick PATA / IDE optical drive will work. If they happen to share one IDE channel then you will need to find a burner that is set to slave (this is normally in the firmware) although you could put a jumper on the HDD to make it the slave.

John

 

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

As far as I can tell from device manager, my current optical drive is the only drive using the IDE channel (UDMA-2). The HDD (Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00) seems to be using a separate, SATA controller (UDMA-5), according to Nero's InfoTool, so am I right in thinking that there should be no problem with the new drive conflicting with the HDD?

The research I've done suggests that the bezels on such drives are fairly standard (apart from a few exotic exceptions). The Liteon I mentioned is just about the only slim PATA/IDE laptop drive readily available these days so, as I can't use the current drive any more, I'll just have to bite the bullet and try it!

Thanks for your help, fellas. If you have any more thoughts on the above, please let me know.

Lownes

 

I agree. There should be no problem.

I have swapped a few bezels on notebook burners in the past 5 years or so and they were all interchangeable. There is some more info in this thread.

John

 

Thanks again, John, you've been a great help. I'd come across that thread before in the course of my researches and, as far as I can tell, the old bezel should fit the new drive.

Nothing for it now but to give it a whirl! At least I can sally forth reassured that, if anything goes wrong, it's not for want of preparation!

Watch the horizon for distress flares!

Lownes.

 

Hi, it's me again!

I fitted the new Liteon drive into my Vostro 1700, booted up, and Vista seemed happy enough. The drive works fine, reading and writing to CD and DVD without a hitch. However, after closing the laptop and opening it later (awakening it from 'sleep') the drive light comes on and stays on unless I reboot. There are no alerts or warnings in Device Manager, and Vista still recognises the drive as idle --ejecting for a new disc if I try to access the drive-- but won't read or write.

I've tried refitting the drive in case there was a bad connection, but the problem persists. Any idea what could be causing such a problem?

Thanks for your patience!

Lownes.

 

Ummm! That's a weird problem. Does it also happen on resume from hibernation? (Sleep tends to be more problematic on power management issues).

I would start by reinstalling the chipset driver and IDE driver. Also check if the BIOS is the latest version.

John

 

Thanks for getting back so quickly!

I've found some advice on the MS support site which suggests deleting the upper and lower filter values from the registry (I only have a lower filter valie), so I may try that first, unless you counsel otherwise.

I know there's a newer BIOS available, but I've been wary of updating while things have been running OK. Looks like I may have to stop being such a coward!

I've yet to try hibernate, but I'll give it a go.

I assume that I reinstall chipset and IDE drivers by uninstalling in Device Manager?

Thanks again,

Lownes

 

That is definitely worth a try. Those settings can cause various problems, including disappearing optical drives.

That is also worth doing. The Dell BIOS update process seems to be very robust so there's little likelihood of it going wrong.

I would just run the installer of the latest versions as offered on the Dell download site for the Vostro 1700.

John