"Hammering" optical drive

[Mandi]

I have a client machine with a cd-rw drive making the worst interior-case noise I've ever heard . . . the drive is only a few months old, and still reads/writes data just fine. But after a minute or so, it makes a sound that I at first thought was a fan blade hitting something - a roaring/chattering/hammering noise is the best I can describe it. It stops immediately if I yank the drive's power connection.

I've done a bunch of searches on troubleshooting drive noise, and none of them seem applicable.

Is the drive toast? Is there something obvious I'm overlooking here?

[Kevin]

I have only seen that happen when using discs that are unbalanced so that they wobble while spinning.

I suppose it could also be some kind of problem with the motor.

If it does it on all discs I would say try to get a warranty replacement but if it is specific to a disc or brand of discs then get different discs.

[Jeff]

I've had a couple CD drives do this. First was a sony 8x in an old pentium pro a few years ago that developed the noise along with scratching CD's you put into it... learned the hard way when I ruined my Windows NT CD. Next was a generic $20 drive that did it from the start in antoher machine -- noisy but after a while it kicks in and reads the disc, no scratching luckily.

[Andilinks]

Is the drive toast?Unless there can be noise without vibration this can only cascade eventually into toast. IMHO

If it's still in warranty now's the time to catch it, not when the toaster pops--which may be too late. Even if it's specific to just one brand or type of disk, unless you've bought defective or extremely cheap disks.

Andi

[Mandi]

It's doing it across all brands and types of disks. I'll recommend they RMA it, then.

Thanks for the benefit of your experience with disk scratching; that hadn't occurred to me. I know that will convince the client for sure - a drive they can replace; dozens of Shredded By The Kids Who Kept Using the Drive software . . . ouch.