G5 superdrive -- how long do they last?

Hey all --

I bought my G5 in Nov 2003 and have uses the superdrive almost every day since then. Has anyone out there had to replace the superdrive? How long do they usually last?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but are there any maintenance products (software, actual cleaning, etc) one can use on the superdrive?

thanks
Karl

of the 8 or so G5's ive been around in the same timeframe ive yet to see any superdrives go bad, and none have had any specific maintenance done.

what's got you worried?

Hey Wayne --

Well, I am getting intermittent errors. When I say intermittent, I mean, nothing really traceable. Usually all is groovy, but sometimes I can't make an Audio CD, sometimes my DVD screeners fail. Error messages are these general OSX messages that tell me nothing. After restart, all's OK for the moment, but little failures persist at odd but crucial times (see time of this post -- almost 5AM -- deadline looming). My background in Windows told me that drives eventually fail, so I wonder if the superdrive might be dying, perhaps time for a replacement...

We are talking about mechanical parts and all, and a lot of use. So, it's gotta die at some point.

Right?

Any thoughts?

k

yeah, thats sensible logic i guess. but specifically what kind of errors are you getting? what brands and types of discs are you using?

Whip up four gigs of files. Doesn't much matter what. Transfer them all over to a Data DVD (DVD-R mounted without video burning software).

OSX goes nuts to make sure you get a good data burn and checks everything thoroughly. Do this three times. If there is anything wrong with the burn system, this test will fail. Of our four Macs, we found two bad drives in older or well used machines. We had the same symptoms you did. Unexplained failures.

Blank media quality has a lot to do with this as well. Avoid anything that says "Hi Quality."

Koz

I had unexplained failures on my G4 Superdrive. I got one of those Maxel Laser cleaning discs (looks like a CDROM with an eyelash glued to it) and ran it through a few times...all was well forever more after that.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

> Usually all is groovy, but sometimes I can't make an Audio CD, sometimes
> my DVD screeners fail.

I get those as well. Sometimes Toast Titanium would fail in burning an audio CD for no visible reason. I've traced most occurrences of this problem to a bad file -- one or two MP3s in my collection simply will not burn onto a CD properly. I haven't had bad DVD burns from my DVD Studio Pro, though my workload is light, so that may not be indicative of anything.

I think disc-burning processes are a little inconsistent. Work once, might not work twice. Errors may not necessarily mean a bad drive, though we certainly can't rule that out either.

Here's where we part company. Data DVD burns are 100% successful or your machine is broken--and it doesn't have to be the actual drive.

If you do all the right things, *all* your burns should be highly successful, given you start out with brand name or other high quality disk stock.

We do have failures, but only between the old and new DVD players. This is how we weed out the disks that are unlikely to play in, say, the reps office in Chicago. The burn doesn't actually fail, but it does produce a disk that is 90% successful instead of 100% successful.

In very, very rare circumstances, we have had a show what will not burn, and it almost always has problems compressing as well. None of this stuff happens in a vacuum. Once a year we have a show that cuts properly and compresses perfectly but will not burn. That's one out of thousands of successful burns.

This is also one of the machines that a new burner in it from having failed the above Data DVD test.

Koz