Optical Drives for Laptops

This is possible if you have the right skills and feel confident enough to do it. You can try this by removing and reinstalling your current optical drive. However, it is very important to motorize the position of all screws and brackets, by using the wrong screws you could potentially damage your drive or computer.

Additionally, the following videos might help, even though they are in German.

This is technically possible, although there are a few things you need to consider.

First your DVD drive needs to be connected via SATA and not PATA, because that is what all Blu-Ray drives use. Second you should test, whether your system meets the requirements of playing a Blu-Ray with a tool like BD & 3D Advisor by Cyberlink.

That your optical drive won't open could be due to a program using it. Try killing it using the task manager. The you should be able to open the optical drive again.

Should this method not work, try opening the drive by inserting something like a paperclip into the emergency eject hole in the front bezel. However, this method does not work with slot in drives.

In this case or in the case that the drive still won't open you will have to consult a specialist.

Optical drive manufacturers used o use different types of bezels for their drives, which made it hard wo find one for your drive. That is why the “General Bezel Assembling Standard” has been created, now most bezels should fit on most optical drives.

Which optical drive can be installed in your Notebook depends on three factors

Which connection type is used? (SATA or PATA)

What height of optical drive is used? (Slim 12,5mm or SuperSlim 9,5mm)

Does your laptop meet the System requirements?

SATA drives can not be used with a PATA controller and vice versa.

 Before installing your new optical drive, make sure you attached the mounting bracket from the old drive to the new one.

Most optical drives are sold without a bezel, make sure you attach the old one to the new drive.

With the tool BD & 3D Advisor you can check whether your System has enough performance to play Blu-Rays.          

In Germany and GB region code 2 is used, in the USA and Canada it is region code 1. Further information can be found in this Wikipedia-article. 

In most cases this is due to the material fatigue of the laser head, due to this it can no longer focus the beam enough to read the track width on a DVD. However it still works with CDs because they use a wider track.

• First you should check, whether it is seated correctly in the slot, if not the pins could not be making contact.
• It could also be a problem with the firmware of your drive, which could lead to it not being recognized in the BIOS. If this is the case a new firmware has to be flashed on to the drive.

If it still won't work thee is the suspicion, that your device drive might be broken.