Learning to live with craptacular.

October 16, 2007 2:43 PM

Will my data transfers stop timing out if I upgrade my laptop's DVD-RW drive?

I am the recent gift recipient of a Gateway MX6214 [WinXP/160GHz Celeron M420/512MB RAM], which includes a Philips SDVD8820 as its internal drive.

When I try to pull data off of various archived media (CD-Rs and DVDs), the damn thing freezes/times out in mid-transfer and I have to constantly reboot the machine when Windows Explorer gets a flat tire. Using the same (and/or similar) discs, this has never happened on my Win2K desktop FrankenPC that I built myself, so I know it isn't the media.

Unfortunately, because I'm in the midst of a cross-country move, my big machine is out of commission, and I'm 75% convinced I should just sell it instead of shipping it to the West Coast anyway. So, assuming I have only this underperforming laptop from now on, will upgrading to a more hardy DVD-RW drive solve the problem? Or is there another issue at hand?

FWIW, the thing also does a crap job of ripping CDs, unless one walks away and does not touch, bump, brush, or otherwise alarm the machine. (Even when using EAC.)

posted by mykescipark to computers & internet (1 comment total)

I assume you've seen the urgent firmware update already? If you haven't, it could certainly help.
posted by Soup at 3:15 PM on October 16, 2007