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# 2025-12-15 - Replacing My Laptop Optical Drive |
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A month or so ago, i noticed my terminal would randomly lock up in |
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the middle of typing. Other parts of the system were still |
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responsive. In fact, i could open a new xterm and use it just fine. |
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I felt alarmed and it took me a while to correlate my problem to |
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optical drive errors in the `dmesg` output. Why was the optical |
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drive being accessed at that time? I still don't know, but i'd guess |
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some indexer (tumblerd?) or volume manager was probing the drive and |
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got hung up. |
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It only happened once in a while, so i ignored it. The drive |
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continued to work fine. I actually like optical media. I wrote a |
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CD-RW only a couple of weeks ago. |
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A few days ago, the drive completely failed. It would no longer read |
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or write to any media. My USB optical drive worked fine using the |
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same media. |
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I have had many laptops fail over the years. It's a consequence of |
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my style of computing where i use exclusively hand-me-down hardware |
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left behind when family or friends upgrade theirs. My state has an |
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e-waste "recycling" program, which i use enthusiastically, because |
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i like the idea of keeping toxic materials out of the water supply. |
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But before i "recycle" a failed laptop, i will cannibalize the |
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memory, storage, etc, including the optical drive. So i have spare |
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parts! |
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This morning i swapped in a Panasonic DVD writer manufactured in |
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2013. It works great. The only issue is that i cannot re-use the |
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face plate from the failed drive because it's not detachable. So the |
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replacment drive has a silver face plate while the rest of the laptop |
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is black. It's like driving a repaired car with one door that's a |
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different color than the others. Functionality is fine, and the |
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cosmetic dissonance gives the car character. ;) |
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tags: bencollver,technical |
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# Tags |
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bencollver |
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technical |
