CD-RW Drive Problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andy
  • Start date Start date
A

Andy

Does anyone have any idea if CD drives are very prone to problems with their
power inlets. My brother was fiddling around with one of my PCs whilst it
was switched on and he tried to connect a power cable to the back of the CD
drive. He said that it made a "snick" noise when he tried to connect it and
i can no longer get it to work. Anyone know what might have happened?

Many Thanks
 
It's really hard to tell exactly what happened without inpsecting it
personally.

Of course, you are always supposed to power down before you make any changes
like plugging in an IDE cable or even a power lead. It's just good
practice. 70% of the time you can get away with it and no (obvious) harm
will be done, but that other 30% of the time you can fry a drive, fry a
motherboard, or just cause the system to go wonky and loose a bit data.

In your case, it could be something is simple as a pin broke free from the
solder. Or it could be that he shorted two pins together while plugging in
the connector. (As hard as it can be to do given the design of the
connections, it can happen!) It could also be that the drive just decided
this was the time to die.

Again, this isn't something wher eyou can give a cut and dry answer without
personally inspecting the hardware to look for signs such as a carbon track
indicating a short took place, or a loose pin in the power connection.

-Steve
 
Does anyone have any idea if CD drives are very prone to problems with their
power inlets. My brother was fiddling around with one of my PCs whilst it
was switched on and he tried to connect a power cable to the back of the CD
drive. He said that it made a "snick" noise when he tried to connect it and
i can no longer get it to work. Anyone know what might have happened?

Many Thanks
Click to expand...
Sheesh man NEVER fiddle around swapping out drives when powered up...you
have learnt this valuable lesson the hard way I'm afriad! :-(
 
Very true. But if you work long enough on systems, you eventually forget
the unit is powered on. I got away with pulling a NIC and modem at one
time. Another card at another time. What I don't like is "Suspend" mode on
PCs when triggered by the power off button. The PC looks like it is off. I
have not been burnt (unintentional pun) by that yet as I almost always
unplug the PS before I pull devices.
 
Sheesh man NEVER fiddle around swapping out drives when powered up...you
have learnt this valuable lesson the hard way I'm afriad! :-(
Click to expand...

It's not quite that clear-cut though... for example, a similar
situation can occur when someone uses an external, self-powered drive
enclosure, the USB (or firewire, etc) powers the bridge
chip/circuitry, then the user may turn on the internal power supply.
I seldom if ever hear of that causing damage.


Dave
 
Back
Top