P180HM loose optical drive

I got my P180 HM model in today and noticed the optical drive to be a bit rather loud. And the noise it was making changed by me just simply placing my hand on the chasis just resting it there while i type.

I looked a little bit closer and noticed the drive itself seems to be lose, it sags a little bit even when closed, and i noticed if i press the drive bay upwards towards the body of the laptop the noise dissapears is there a way to correct this permanently? its rather....annoying. I sent a PM to mythlogic but i figured id fish here and maybe ill get a faster reply as well

 

Try it with a different disc to see if it does the same thing. Most of the time we hear of this is because of a slight warp in the disc, they spin so fast even a small amount will cause it to make that noise.

 

i tried a different disk and got the same result, its happening when running installers, i first noticed it with my starcraft 2 disk, and now WOW cataclysm, i havent tried watching a movie or anything to see if its exclusive to install disks or not

 

i know what the problem is however, its caused by the optical drive vibrating against the body of the laptop above it, if i press up on the disk tray the vibration and noise goes away, is this normal?

 

I would say that this is normal since I also experienced the same issue on my P150HM. When you put in any disk the optical drive vibrates very loudly unless you push up/in on the disk tray. I couldn't imagine being able to watch a DVD if it is that loud during playback unless you wear some headphones. I only used the drive a few times to install the basics then I swapped it out for a secondary hdd.

 

it is indeed very loud and annoying, as far as headphones i dont imagine id be watching a movie on a laptop without headphones anyways, the sound just isnt there

 

Have you tried removing the ODD totally from the chassis and reinstalling it, could be a screw just not quite tight as it could be.

 

We have seen that with the straight DVD, not the combo drive. The DVD and the new Blu-Ray both spin really loudly. They are fast and some of the P series models have really loose optical slots to begin with. Sometimes a little soft pad on the top of the optical drive is good, similar to the little strips that help hold in the main HDD/SSD. This is quick, simple, cheap, safe way to reduce the vibrations of aluminum on plastic.

 

That sounds like a reasonable fix to me, this is in fact a DVD writer/Bluray reader so its consistent with you saying the bluray drives spin loudly. Is a stip like something that i could find at say a hardware store? im not sure where id look there arent many computer shops in my city

 

I would take a piece or two of double sided sticky tape (the thick foam kind) and just don't take the backing off (so it doesn't stick to anything). It'll make a good pad and can be bought basically anywhere, use a couple so there isn't a "lump" in the middle of the drive, basically two pieces on each horizontal side of the drive to distribute the weight and pressure.

 

Just wondering if any euro sellers still have this in stock.