Plextor 16/10/40 almost dead...help?

[stoner87]

I've enjoyed my plextor 16/10/40 atapi drive for a full year, until Saturday morning, when it decided it wasn't going to recognize media anymore. I was trying to copy a CD, and Nero kept giving me a "detecting drive" message when it came time to burn (reading off my DVD drive). That was funny...never seen that before. It turns out that the drive wouldn't read any types of media, but the drive would show up in windows (XP), I could eject the tray from explorer. It wouldn't burn, and it wouldn't read any media, pressed, burnt, or otherwise. I was hoping that it was just that computer, so I threw it into my Win98 machine - came up in bios, grabbed itsself a drive letter, but acted like there was no media inserted whenever a CD was put in it.

Soooo....Plextor warranties its drives for one year. I bought it about a year ago, so I thought it would be cool to send in an RMA form. Turns out plextor starts their year from the manufacturing date (March 2001), and not the purchase date. Grr..... Out-of-warranty service is a hefty $100 + $15 shipping. I could get a new plex 24x from Newegg for that much.

So, what to do now? I've heard that it might be a matter of greasing the rails, but I really have no idea what that means. If anyone could enlighten me on that, or perhaps another means of repairing the drive, I'd love to hear it. I'm to the point where I'm ready and willing to tear it open in hopes of repairing it myself, as it seems to have no value as-is. I always thought plextor was a top-notch company, and this puts a sour taste in my mouth.

Thanks in advance.

 

[stoner87]

NE1?

 

[Yossarian]

I would call bulls--- on Plextor on that one. A year from manufacturing date? Are they saying that if a part sits on a shelf for 8 months it only has a 4 month warranty when someone eventually buys it? That's ridiculous. Keep trying until they honor the warranty.

From their website:

"PLEXTOR CORP. ("Plextor") warrants your PLEXTOR CD-Recordable drive, CD-ReWritable drive, MegaPleX, NetPleX, REPLEX, Proline and Hot Swap Tower against any defect in material and workmanship, under normal use, for a period of one year following its date of purchase."

 

[TheWart]

definitely work on their tech support. plex is a solid company that cares about customers, maybe you just got a bad rep having a bad day.


also, maybe try to update the firmware from the win98 machine?

 

[yugpatel]

Bump. As I have the similar problem but with CD-ROM. Windows sees it but say no media.

 

[madara]

Interesting I got same drive and I can NOT burn cue or bin file. I get error with fireburner, easy cd, goldenhawk technology,dj etc. All its good for is backuping what download. Get error bad media or can not read drive on all of them. Done formats, update aspi, letting cdr software use its aspi. I am at loss myself. Good luck.

 

[Dormant]

Try updating your ASPI drivers. I find them to be the cause of 90 percent of my burning problems and I have the exact same drive as you.

 

[McCarthy]

My year and a half old or so burner's doing the same thing. Ricoh 8x4x32 rebadged to Cendyne. Turns out it's not spinning up.

Took it apart, cleaned the motor with electrical parts cleaner and it worked like new for a couple days, now back at it. If Plextor absolutely won't warrenty for you, this might be something to try. Unless you can hear yours spinning up, in which case it's something else that broke.

--Mc

 

[ripthesystem]

warranty has to be from purchase date..
I'm with Pipboy

ripthesystem