Upgrading Ones Toshiba Laptop CDROM Drive
Upgrading Ones Toshiba Laptop CDROM DriveIn this post I'm going to discuss how difficult it is to upgrade your Combo Drive on your Toshiba Laptop. The discussion includes all models of the Toshiba Laptop on sale and previous models all the way back to 1999!
This article is aimed at all skill levels, and you do not need to be a "techie" to understand many of the concepts I'am going to talk about.Perhaps your CDROM drive, burner, DVD player has finally given up the ghost? you go online only to discover that its actually more difficult than you imagined to replace and purchase a replacement drive for your Toshiba laptop.
We will start with what is a CDROM drive?
Simply put it is a device can can read data from a CDROM which has its data read surface programmed in such a way that a controlled laser beam can read any part of the CDROM disk. To enable the data to be read from the surface faster the disc is usually rotated around about 12X up to 52X times the speed of a single speed CDROM drive. A single speed drive has the ability to transfer 150 kilobytes of data per second (which is really slow! by todays standards), where a 24X Asus Combo Drive will transfer 3.6 Megabytes of data per second. Most modern drives whether they are a CDROM drive, DVD readers, DVD and CDRW drives and DVDRW drives are usually have a transfer rate of around 24X and upwards. Older systems usually had a 2x, 4x, or 8X and 10x drive fitted as standard, earlier DVD drives were 2x or 4x and more modern DVD's are at least 12X upwards including DVD/CDRW drives.
CDROM refers to a media type that is read only and that is you cannot change the data on the CD by attempting to write over it. CDRW indicates that a CD disk has the property of being able to write data on it, as are DVDRW Cds.Most Toshiba laptops manufactured within the last 4 years will certainly be fitted with a CDROM/DVD/CDRW drive (commonly called combo drives), if you take a look at the front bezel of the drive it will actually be displayed on a legend. Or you can view the properties of the drive in the device manager inside the system icon located within the control panel.
If perhaps you have a Toshiba Laptop that is around this age you may find that by this time the drive is "tired" or intermittent and perhaps is due for a replacement.The good news is that it is no longer very expensive to replace any drive and even better depending on which model you own, removal of a drive is within your ability. Even better still most modern drives fitted to most of the Toshiba range of laptops were fitted with the newer "generic" type of plastic cover bezel, this means that with little or no modification you can buy a bare drive remove the original bezel and then fit this to the new drive and then fit the drive inside the laptop. On older machines of age greater than 4-8 years old, Toshiba fitted many different front bezel styles that were particularly made for that type of drive fitted, but it can be done with little or no effort on 50% of the machines manufactured. Some Toshiba machines for example as the Satellite Pro 4030CDT/CDS series of machines are not easy to do and it is not recommended that you try, and quite frankly if you are still using this model its not worth it. The same goes for the Satellite 1100 and 1110 machines (PIII1300 Celeron, and P4 1.5G Celeron machines respectively)but at least these machines are still very usable if your using Windows Xp or Windows 2000 and may be worth it factoring in the labour costs plus the drive.
Most of the Toshiba Tecra range, approx 40% of the Portege range,100% of the Equium range, 50% of the Satellite Pro and Satellite range can be done very easily without major trauma and drives can be purchased easily.Some models such as the Satellite A60 (and Pro, Equium range) are fitted with a bare drive, that is they are just as they come with nothing else except a fixing bracket attached to the rear of the drive with which you can remove very easily. More modern Toshiba laptops (from 2006 onwards) are now fitted with this style of drive.
Models that predate 2006 were fitted with drives fixed inside a caddy or a special plastic carrier, but essentially they are exactly a bare drive when they are removed from the caddy. The advantage of placing the drive in a caddy was simply to protect the drive and provide an easy method of removing the drive from the machine very easily. The downside of this is added weight, use of special connectors and in some cases specially shaped front panel bezels on the front of the drives. Most of these drives that were manufactured with a caddy are a specific logic and require replacements that fit that exact logic. An example of a popular machine would have been the Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 (P4 1.6G, machine), as is the Tecra 9100 series machine (P4 1.6G~1.8G machines). All these drives are readily available as either new or good working second hand units. The drives themselves are interchangeable with different models from this era, but the bezel colours and styles were different.
So what if my CDROM drive has failed?
No problem, if the machine has a caddy system you can release the locking catch on the underside of the laptop and pull out the drive and then remove the caddy or buy another complete drive with caddy and reassemble, on more modern machines you will need to dismantle the system partially to gain access to remove the drive.
What do I buy if I can't get the original drive?
These days a basic Acer Combo Drive is not really enough in terms of being useful, so you should look at a minimum a DVD/CDRW drive (DVD reader, Data writer), or perhaps a DVD/CDRW/DVDRW(DVD reader, Data writer, DVD writer), or if you are upgrading a CDROM/DVD/CDRW drive then go to the next higher combination. Newer drives being as they are will be faster than older drives, some people who are constantly burning onto media will require faster drives check the spec before you buy and in this case always buy new, if you are just upgrading but are only going to occasionally write data then you can upgrade to a DVD/CDRW drive. If the CDROM device that you have removed predates 2006 then you may be better buying a used replacement drive that been tested and working with of course a suitable warranty.