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    Dell Inspiron 1420 DVD Drive/ Burner Swap?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by tofast4uall, Feb 9, 2008.

  1. tofast4uall

    tofast4uall Notebook Geek

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    Hi.

    I need to purchase a new dvd burner/ Drive for my Dell Inspiron 1420.

    There are no drives on ebay for this model. I was wondering what the height (in mm)of the drive is.
    (And What the cheapest price of a drive would be)

    ALSO

    I was wondering If there was any other DVD Drive/ Burner that would work and fit in my Dell Inspiron 1420.

    Thanks,
    Jack
     
    tofast4uall, Feb 9, 2008
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  2. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    What model is your existing burner? Device Manager will provide this information and then you can Google for the specs. The vast majority of notebook burners are standard 1/2" (12.7mm) thick units to which notebook manufacturers add their own fixing brackets, fascia/ bezel and, sometimes, electrical interface adaptor. The burners are usually held in place by one or two screws on the bottom of the computer. You can find this info in Dell's removal and replacement of parts guide.

    One other aspect to check in Device Manager is, under the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, that one channel has only one device with a current transfer rate of UDMA 2. This means that the burner has one IDE channel for itself and it won't matter whether the replacement is configured to be master or slave.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Feb 9, 2008
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  3. tofast4uall

    tofast4uall Notebook Geek

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    To tell you the truth... its a laptop that i plan on buying thats a barebone. So i cant really check specs.
     
    tofast4uall, Feb 9, 2008
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  4. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    Thanks for the clarification.

    I'm pretty confident that you would be able to swap the burner without hassle. Dell tends to source burners from several manufacturers which means it needs to be a standard part.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Feb 9, 2008
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  5. tofast4uall

    tofast4uall Notebook Geek

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    does that mean that if i were to buy an hp drive or simulkar that is 12.7mm the chances that it would fit are pretty good?
     
    tofast4uall, Feb 10, 2008
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  6. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    Look for something like these at Newegg. "Slim" is use to describe this thickness of burner, but first check the Dell specs. There's a few ultra-slim burners around but they are normally only used in the slim notebooks.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Feb 10, 2008
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  7. tofast4uall

    tofast4uall Notebook Geek

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    tofast4uall, Feb 10, 2008
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