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From: John Rushford on 19 Apr 2006 20:28
Greetings,

I have a 2001 867MHZ Quicksilver powermac g4 that originally came with a
Pioneer DVR-103 superdrive. The drive went bad and I replaced it in
2004 with a DVR-106 drive from QWC and last week it stopped working so,
I've replaced it with a Pioneer DVR-111D BK DL drive from QWC. The
DVR-111D is said to be unsupported in the system profiler but it seems
to work with iTunes and iDVD just fine. Just finished burning a CD from
iTunes and a slide show to DVD with iPhoto and iDVD.

Anyway, I'm wondering why I'm having to replace these drives so often?
I know that my son is burning a ton of CD's through iTunes and I have
made quite a few home movie DVD's over the past 5 years. Are these
things limited to so many hours of burning? The old drive was rather
dusty, would cleaning it have helped?

thanks
John
From: Garner Miller on 19 Apr 2006 21:49
In article <_padnRXq77AJSNvZnZ2dnUVZ_vmdnZ2d(a)comcast.com>, John
Rushford <jrushford21(a)comcast.net> wrote:

> I have a 2001 867MHZ Quicksilver powermac g4 that originally came with a
> Pioneer DVR-103 superdrive. The drive went bad and I replaced it in
> 2004 with a DVR-106 drive ... now a Pioneer DVR-111D BK DL drive.
>
> Anyway, I'm wondering why I'm having to replace these drives so often?

They just wear out, honestly, especially with heavy use. I had the
DVR-104 that came in my iMac G4 die a couple of months ago. It was new
in early 2002, so I got about four years out of it. It first stopped
being able to write CD-RWs, but was otherwise OK. A few weeks later, I
got a failed verification on a DVD burn, and knew it was time to
replace it. I put a DVR-110D in it, and it's been fantastic so far;
much faster than the drive it replaced.

> I know that my son is burning a ton of CD's through iTunes and I have
> made quite a few home movie DVD's over the past 5 years. Are these
> things limited to so many hours of burning? The old drive was rather
> dusty, would cleaning it have helped?

Maybe. I did notice that the original DVR-104 I pulled out had a
cooling fan in it; I imagine the 103 you replaced did too. The new
drive *doesn't* have a cooling fan (and thus won't suck in dust), so it
may last a little longer if that was the issue.

But really, I think it's just what you've suggested: It'll only do so
much burning before it wears out. (The lasers get dimmer and dimmer as
they get used, until eventually they're not strong enough to read or
write.)

As cheap as the replacement drive was (I paid around $40 from
meritline.com), I'm not too worried if it dies a couple of years down
the road -- I'll just get another one!

--
Garner R. Miller
Clifton Park, NY =USA=
http://www.garnermiller.com/
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