Panasonic Blu-Ray Drive Compatibility

Hello. I own an Asus z70va looking to upgrade my optical drive to a Panasonic UJ-220 Blu-Ray. I'm only interested in using the drive for backing up data, not for watching movies.

My question is for all Asus notebook owners. Are Panasonic optical drives compatible with Asus? The reason I ask is because the connectors seem different. Would some sort of adapter be needed so that it would fit?

Who has successfully upgraded to a Panasonic Blu-Ray drive? Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

They sometimes use adapters. If you already took apart your unit, if you look at the end where the socket is, there are usually two screws on each side. If you take it off, you might find that the adapter comes off and the socket underneath is something else completely.

So IF you have an adapter and IF the sockets match, it might work. You'll also need to make sure the bezels match (more difficult with special bezels, since there's the LED and button placement) and you would have to take off the mounting rails from the existing one.

The bezel must also match, so it's harder to do a swap if they don't use one of those flat black bezels that have the LED on it and are generic most of the time.

 

Thx for your detailed response. I sent you a P.M. a few min ago.

It is too bad (skoda - what a pity) that swaps can be so complicated. Drives should be universal, not proprietary in any way (imho).

 

Back of the UJ-210:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/Mat****a-UJ-210-...ryZ31564QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Back of a L632D (the Z70V uses a L532A IIRC, not sure if it's completely the same since I never took my L532A apart):
http://www.centrix-intl.com/details.asp?productid=4341
http://www.centrix-intl.com/showpix.asp?pixsource=ts-l632d.jpg&pixselect=ts-l632d-1.jpg
http://www.centrix-intl.com/showpix.asp?pixsource=ts-l632d.jpg&pixselect=ts-l632d-2.jpg

Basically, the positioning of the eject buttons (normal and emergency) and the LED are important.

If the back of your unit looks the same, and the bezel lines up, it might work. No guarantees.

 

Thanks for the pictures. I'm sure the bezel and sockets are the same for the newer UJ-220.

It seems as if your L632D and UJ-210 are very similar. If you wanted to swap, it looks as if you would be able to.

My z70va uses the TSST TS-L462C. The socket/connector on the back looks the same, but the bezel on the front is slightly different. Maybe I can use the bezel that comes with the UJ-210/220...?

 

Most drives are fairly standard, Both those drives have the same plug known as E-IDE. Usually the bezel will just pop off and you clip on the new one, Its in drive manufacturers interest to make it more standard so that its compatiable with a range of machines.

 

Thx Matt. The reason I'm doing this is because right now where I live, there are four DVD-read/CD-write combo drives (all are 12.7mm): 2 for asus notebooks, 1 for Lenovo Thinkpad, and 1 for Fujitsu Lifebook. All notebooks have modular bays with _potentially_ swappable opticals drives. However, none of the four can be interchanged at all. The Lenovo doesn't fit into the Fuji (& vice versa); even the two that came with Asus cannot be swapped for each other.

To me, this is totally absurd. It leads me to believe swapping/upgrading is not that simple (compared with, say, moving an external HD from PC to notebook - simple plug/play via USB). That's why I'm being so cautious now that I desire to upgrade to blu-ray.

Upgrading for the PC - that was cake. Popped the case open, plugged the bwu-100a in, voila...no hassle whatsoever. For notebooks, it seems more complicated from what I've seen.

Or maybe it takes removing some screws, swapping the pieces that surround the drives (including the sockets)?

Thx for your input.

 

Modular bays are only interchangeable with other ones provided by the manufacturer I think, Because they have extra ports for Sata/ Ingoing power connections that normal bays dont have because they have to support hard drives and batteries.