noisey cd drive , dell laptop

steveo3002

i have a dell 6400 series laptop and its always had a noisey cd drive

is there anything i can check /fix diy before sending it back for repair

just thought its worth a ask incase something can be done without taking it apart etc

Lakeuk

Most cd/dvd drives on PC's are noise when accessed for most things, best test is to watch a dvd movie, the drive should spin at a slower rate and be quiet, if not then it sounds like there maybe a problem

steveo3002

hmm someone else has just mentioned theres is noisey too

so maybe its normal for them to be noisey at speed? i think its acceptable at low speed on movies , i'll go check

steveo3002

right its just a slight purr when watching a dvd...seems normal

just how noisey should be accepatble when its doing something at max speed

Millionaire

steveo3002 wrote: »

right its just a slight purr when watching a dvd...seems normal

just how noisey should be accepatble when its doing something at max speed

Well at max speed its gonna sound like a laptop fan running at very high speed. Can be noisy becasue its working away as quick as it can.

As you say its purring on DVD playback, so seems that it might be ok.

steveo3002

well id say it sounds worse than a fan sounds...it sort of sounds like the disc catches on something but i see no marks on the disc

Millionaire

steveo3002 wrote: »

well id say it sounds worse than a fan sounds...it sort of sounds like the disc catches on something but i see no marks on the disc

Thats most likely your laser moving across while its reading info from the disc. a stop, start sort or scratching noise. you can hear this alot esp when load large applications etc.

skiddy2k

many Dell PCs make to make lloads of noise when they're new brand new, but the noise slowly goes down after its used... may be the same case for the laptop... how old is it?

Lakeuk

All my dvd drives when running at the max sound like the PC is going to take off, it's normal

nickcardwell

you can get software to slow down the cd/dvd drive, instead of it spinning up fast you can set it to make it read an decent speed but not full boot. eg anydvd has a feature to enable speed control and you can set it to slow & quiet or medium or fast & noisy

joe5000

Hi, i recently purchased a dell laptop inspiron 1100. I had exactly the same problem. I wondered if it was a fault internally so i tried a drive from my friends who was of the same model dvd+-rw. It turned out that that worked therefore it was a problem with the optical drive. I went on technical online chat help with dell and they issued me another dvd drive free of charge and i am on the cheapest collect and return policy. I recieved this and fit it to my laptop and it works perfectly. I suggest getting in touch with dell and seeing what they can do. Hope this helps joe.