Slot Loaded Disk Drive Problem

Last night, I put in an install disk into my drive to install drivers for a new video camera I got. Turns out there was a problem with the CD and windows could not recognize it and the disk drive itself kept spinning up and down trying to I guess get to the beginning of the disk.

First I tried ejecting the disk with the touch controls above the number pad, and that didn't work.

Next I tried going to "My computer" to right click on the disk drive and select "eject" That didn't work either. Instead it crashed explorer. (probably because windows was caught in an infinite loop trying to read the disk).

I shut off the computer and turned it back on. I have the bios set up to boot from a CD first so, the bios hanged at that screen because it couldn't read the disk either.

To make a long story short, I had to completely disassemble my laptop, take out the disk drive, and then completely take apart the disk drive to take out the CD. Thank god everything worked when I put it back together.

Is there anyway to manually eject a disk (like every normal non slot loaded drive is able to do) WITHOUT taking the entire laptop apart?

 

yeah, there's no hole for a paper clip on these. but, you do know you can hit F2 and go into setup to change the boot order? at least temporarily....

i would have tried that and the touchpad and rclick "eject" a few times before i took the lappy apart. i think nircmd (nir sofer utility) can force a cd eject from the command-line.

but then, you've had it all apart and when yo go to do it again to re-pad & paste the GPUs and CPU, it'll be easy-peasy...

 

for me that is a down side for m17x but since i don't use the optical drive that much it's ok.
You can try pressing the SHIFT button while turning on the machine(of course change the boot order first so it won't lag). Glad you were able to get it out.

 

Yikes, AARP! That's a gnarley way to have to go! I think they need to make some kind of bail-out method for getting disks out of slot-load drives.

 

Some of them disks "behave" and crack into pieces thus making them easier to extract

 

best way to fix this is to convert the optical "bay" to an HDD and make the cd/dvd drive external. You'll only have to take it apart once.....

 

There is supposed to be a teeny pin hole that allows this to happen - even when it's off. It's probably even on the drive unit AW uses, but the slot load design AW cut into the case doesn't allow for that

 

when I took it apart and took the drive out, I searched all over the drive to see if there was such a pin hole or something so I wouldn't have to disassemble the entire drive as well. I'm not saying there wasn't one, but I spent a good 10min looking over the entire drive carefully and nothing jumped out at me.

And I'm kind of curious about converting the bay into a HDD, what would I need to buy (besides an HDD of course to go about doing that?)

 

read this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m15x/481238-guide-m15x-optical-drive-hdd-caddy-installation-56k-warning.html

And check out the M17x owners's lounge, v3. DR650SE just did it and has pics.

 

It shouldn't be a pin hole, but more like then tip of a bar that can be pushed inwards. That's how it's done on normal try loaders, so I don't know if this applies to slot loaders (I am assuming the loading mechanism is a similar spring driven type).

 

^^Slot loading optical drives don't benefit from such a pin hole.