cd/dvd rom drives

I have my friends old toshiba tecra 2100, he got rid of it due to the dvd rom not working and buying a new laptop. I already have a laptop and 2 desktops myself, but figured i'd fix it up for the hell of it. Are the dvd-roms universal? I have replaced them before but only exact same parts. Could I just order a dvd-rom from anywhere? What should I look for?

 

You want to look for the size, and connections, if both are the same you should be fine.

For example there could be 2 identicle drives, but made for seperate notebooks and slightly different shapes or sizes.

I would play it safe and get the same model drive, it's probably pretty cheap anyways.

 

Any sites you'd recommend? I've always dealt with newegg, but can't seem to find much. Thanks for the quick response as well.

 

The drive in it when spinning the cd/dvd's makes a clicking sound like its rubbing...so I'm assuming its most likely too much of a pain to fix

 

most laptop uses the same DVD drive/ If you know where the screw is to remove your optical drive, you're good to go.

I think in Newegg they offers cheap laptop parts. NEC DVD burner for laptop is currently out of stock so just add a notify note to your email.

There's a philips burner available but I don't know about quality yet.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=2010100005+1036508673&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=5

 

This is not true.

I had a Toshiba Tecra S1 and the drive died. A teac DW-224e

I tried to replace it with a Matsushita dvd burner but the bios would not recognise it and Toshiba appearently have stopped updating the bios for Tecra S1.

The best bet is to replace a like for like drive especially for older notebooks or get a USB/firewire external drive.