Clevo 2700T Upgrade Optical Drive

Several years ago we bought a Clevo 2700T notebook (known in Australia as Excel 2700T).
We are giving it to our daughter and want to replace the CD/DVD player with a burner. Is this possible, or would we be better getting an external burner so that she has a player and a burner?
Either way, what would be the best burner?
Thanks

 

Is it a PIII machine? If it is the only thing I would wonder about getting an external drive is whether it has USB 2.0. If it doesn't have USB 2.0, it probably won't support DVD burning. If it has Firewire that may be an option. If she's not moving it much, an external desktop drive will always offer better quality and speed.

I don't see why the drive can't be replaced. Making it fit is usually the biggest problem. Master/Slave settings can be an issue as well. I'm not super familliar with the Clevo 2700T. I've always been kind of partial to NEC and LG drive, but most laptop are at least a cut below desktop drives. Good Luck.

 

It's USB is definitely 1.0, but it does have fireware. I've done many builds and upgrades of pcs, but apart from adding extra RAM I've never had a go at a laptop - not there's much to lose with this old clunker. However, if I could add a burner to it, she would be more than happy. She only wants to surf the net, download some music (and burn to a CD), and do simple editing of her photographs. I don't think she intends burning DVDs (but what would a Dad know).
BTW, it has a Pentium II 996Mhz with 504MB of RAM. I think the current optical drive is a Samsung.
Maybe I should pull the drive out (if I can) measure it up and try and find a burner of the same size?

 

Check out your options, but when I had the same issue with my Dell many years ago I bought external. I had no firewire so I bought a PCMCIA USB 2.0 card, was very happy.

 

Thanks powerpack. It would still be neater if I could go internal, although having 2 optical drives makes it quicker to do backups (if the old notebook has the grunt?).
What's the faster interface, USB 2.0 or firewire?

 

Theoretically USB 2.0 60MB/s Firewire 400 49MB/s. But in the real world everybody says Firewire something about USB 2.0 having more overhead? But because of the speed limitations of the drive you are talking about I think it might not matter.

 

I think if I recall correctly and that's assuming a lot, the max CD burn speed for USB 1.1 is 4x which would take about 30 minutes for a full burn. PCMCIA card or firewire will work.

If it looks like a standard drive I see no reason why it can't be replaced. Sometimes notebook manufacturers use oddly shaped bezels so making it fit can be problematic. Again I'm not super familiar with the Clevo. If it is oddly shaped you can sometimes cut or swap the bezels.

The Master/Slave can be an issue as well. Unlike a desktop drive which uses jumpers to set Master or Slave, a notebook drive will either have small dip switches on the inside or the firmware is used to set whether it is Master or Slave.

 

You should be able to upgrade to a CD burner drive without a problem; I did it on my old Dell Inspiron 5000 which had a 600MHz PIII and Windows 2000. As ZaZ mentioned notebook drives are generally standard.

 

I posted a reply yesterday but it seems to have disappeared ???
The computer recognises the existing drive as a Samsung DVD-ROM SN-608B. Width:128mm; depth:129mm; height:13mm.
Is this a standard size, and if so what would be a good burner transplant, considering the age and speed of the computer?
Thanks

 

Burning isn't a particularly CPU intensive task. I've seen burners work on PIIs without any problems.

 

That's a standard notebook slimline optical drive.

You can choose between a CD Combo drive and a DVD drive. An extra $15 will give you DVD burning capability. If region-free DVD watching is of interested then there is an easy work-around for the Liteon drives.

John

 

Yes, but are there particular notebook burners that are better or more tolerant than others?

 

Matsh!ta drives are well known for being troublesome and should be avoided.

NEC are usually good, Liteons are generally trouble-free and the Toshiba-Samsungs are somewhere in between.

John

 

Thanks John
I found on another thread that Samsung were woeful and NEC were very good. Then I tried to do a search for NEC burners, optical drives, storage, etc, and couldn't get any decent hits, especially in Australia where I live. Maybe NEC didn't release optical drives in Australia? I know Liteon drives are readily available in Australia. Mabe I should look at Liteon?

 

LG and NEC are my favorites.

 

Thanks ZaZ
LG are also popular in Australia. Although I've seen a fair bit of bagging of their products. I haven't heard anything bad about their optical drives, but more about home theatre gear, ie. set top boxes, sound systems, screens, etc.
All I've got to do now is figure out how to pull the notebook apart without causing any permanent damage. I guess just take it slow and easy and don't force anything. Trouble is with some equipment you need to know the secret little clips that hold things in place, and how to get them to release their grip

 

I've seen a few LG drive, they've all been pretty good. If I had to pick I'd say NEC.

 

Normally, the optical drives are easily removable and are held in by one or two screws. Look on the bottom of the notebook around the boundary of the drive (approximately 13cm square). The screws may even have a circle symbol. If there are no screws on the bottom then they maybe under the keyboard. Once you have found and removed the screws then it's a matter of a gentle pull (it may be easier if you eject the tray so you have some metal to pull on).

Once the drive is out you will probably find there are some fixing brackets or rails screwed onto the drive which you need to unscrew and transfer to to the new unit. You may also need to swap the bezel. In my experience these are interchangeable but some care is needed to prise them off.

John

 

I've done a bit of googling in Australia and the only suitable drive is a Liteon SSM-8515S. It's dual layer,handles all formats, etc (which is more than I was after), and I can buy it for as low as $86.00 plus freight. I got no hits at all when googling for NEC or LG.

 

Thanks John
That gives me plenty of confidence to have a go at it. Nothing worse than getting stuck into something, only to find out you can't proceed any further because something has been factory bonded into place, or you need a special tool to do the next stage

 

Try removing the existing ODD before you order the replacement, just in case there is an unexpected problem.

Also, look in Device Manager (ATA / ATAPI devices) and see if the HDD and the ODD are on separate channels. A few notebooks have the two drives sharing the same channel in which case one has to be set to slave. If the ODD has its own IDE channel then it doesn't matter if it is master or slave.

John

 

Yes, it was mentioned somewhere else that selecting master/slave and IDE channel is not as easy as with a pc. i.e. may be dip switches on motherboard, or may have to be set in Bios or software.
Currently in Device Manager the primary channel appears to have only Device 0 occupied, in PIO mode (Auto Detect is on). I assume this is the HDD.
The secondary channel again has Device 0 occupied, in PIO mode (Auto Detect is on). This would be the reader.

Can devices be upgraded to DMA using firmware or software, or is it just a fixed property of the device (I'm beginning to realise why this notebook was so cheap )

 

Good. The devices on separate channels means you should have no master / slave problem.

Which operating system? XP is normally quite good at getting devices into DMA mode but earlier OSes might get it wrong with consequent performance hit. I'm not sure when hardware support for DMA was introduced.

Google will give plenty of hits for PIO and DMA, but you also need to indicate your operating system. It would be worth trying to get DMA working.

John

 

I've loaded XP Home SP2. I'm not too sure if I've got the latest drivers for some on the onboard gear. I know I've got the latest BIOS (I also know that the "latest" drivers for most of the onboard gear is at least 6 or 7 years old ).

 

Is "Use DMA if available" the preferred transfer mode in the ATA / ATAPI channel properties? However, once devices have dropped into PIO it can be difficult to get them out. One fix which usually works is to uninstall the IDE channels in Device Manager and then let the OS redetect the hardware.

John

 

"Use DMA if Available" is selected for all channels. I've just uninstalled the channels and let XP re-instal them. But their still in PIO mode.
BTW, under "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" there are 3 controllers:-
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
SiS PCI IDE Controller

Maybe it's the SiS Controller that is not allowing the DMA modes to be recognised?

 

That's quite a possibility. Maybe it pre-dates DMA. You could search for documentation for whatever SiS chipset you have.

John

 

I remember doing that a couple of years ago when I was trying to drag a bit more life out of this machine. The chipset is SiS630ST, and the latest SiS IDE Driver was dated "2003-11-18". I'm not too sure if that's the driver I am currently using. I'll have a look tonight.

 

You were right John. I had forgotten to put on the latest chipset drivers. I found and installed LAN, IDE, video and audio drivers, and voila! I now have the HDD running in Ultra DMA Mode5, and the optical drive running in Ultra DMA Mode2.
All I've got to do now is buy and install a burner.
Thanks

 

I don't know if anyone is still subscribed to this thread. Sorry I've been away for 3 weeks. I've just tried to install the new DVD burner to the notebook. No problems! Couldn't see any screws under the notebook, so lifted the keyboard and there was one obvious screw. Removed it, opened the tray, pulled gently and bingo - the old drive slid out. There was a small bracket on the rear end of the drive which I transfered onto the new drive (this is what the screw attaches to). Slid the new drive in, replaced the screw and keyboard, and job finished. Easiest transplant I've ever done. Thanks so much to you guys. Gave me the confidence and the knowhow.
Thanks again.

Nordo

 

Thanks for the update and feedback.

It's always good to know if these changes are successful or hit problems.

John