DRU500A Failed big time !!

[SonyUser]

OK, here is the bad news.

My DRU500A has died after only one month !

It has failed to read any CD or DVD media since yesterday !

Faults

I noticed during the last week that disc's got very hot in the drive, and that the drive was getting hotter than other drives I have here.

It soon started to play up with reading CD's and DVD's, this included the blank disc's (DVD and CD-R), it started to take longer and longer to read / recognise any media I put into it.

Last night the drive finally gave up reading anything I put into it.

The drives light stays orange for well over 1 minute, and then goes out, but the media can not be read by the drive, it's as if the drive is not spinning the disc.

When I took the drive out of the PC, the underside casing at the front was very very hot, it burnt my fingers !

I have since contacted the place I purchased the drive, and they have asked for it back to test.
I do know that they don't have any drives in stock, so it could be some time before I get a new one.

So, just as a warning to owners of the DRU500A, if the drive starts to take a long time to read / recognise media of any kind, or the media is very very hot when you take it out, watch out, the drive is about to fail on you.

SonyUser - UnHappyUser !!

[VEFF]

Sorry to hear it
Were you burning a lot with it (i.e. a number of successive burns without any breaks)?
Is your PC case properly cooled? Remember a fast CD burner is only on for three to four minutes at at time.
A DVD burner's lens is on for an hour at a time if you burn at 1X DAO.

In any case, I hope you don't have to wait too long for another unit.
I know how much we all hate that.

Good luck!

[Kennyshin]

A DVD burner's lens is on for an hour at a time if you burn at 1X DAO.

That's something I haven't thought about much until now.

8x - 7-8 min.
4x - 15 min.
2x - 30 min.
1x - 60 min.

Hmmmm. Since it also wears the lens more at faster speeds... and one more reason to have external DVD drives. P4X400 with VT8235 (USB 2.0) motherboards are available for about $50 now. I want one with USB 2.0, Serial ATA, onboard graphics and sound (whatever), Gigabit LAN, support for both 168-pin SDR-SDRAM and 184-pin DDR-SDRAM, etc. for under $100. Plus, native Serial ATA DVD writers and native USB 2.0 DVD writers. - end of wish list at 6 am, Dec. 25, 2002.

[SonyUser]

Update

I did a quick check on the drive and it seems that the motor that spins the disc is not working, as I can not hear the drive spin the disc.

I tested this by doing the following.
I placed a disc into the drive and noted the way it was set (I marked the disc with a pen inline with the four disc holder lugs). I did this a few times and with each test and the disc had not moved, it was still in the same place when the tray was ejected.

I did this test in another CD-RW drive and the disc was not in the same place when the tray was ejected, this indicates that the Sony DRU500A's motor that spins the disc was not working.

The drive also gets very hot on the front underside metal casing, and I mean HOT ! It burns your finger HOT, like as in a hotplate on a cooker, or a kettle with just boiled water !

As for cooling, yes the PC is well cooled with 3 fans in it, one in the PSU, one under the PSU, one in the front of the case.
Air is draged in the front and out the back.

Total Burns -- Lets see, 8 DVD's (3 DVD+R's & 5 DVD-R's, 7 CD-R's and 2 DVD+RW's). Now this is very low, as you will see, I have not burned more than about 20 discs in total !



Anyway, I have now packed the drive in it's box ready to ship back to the place of purchase for them to test and replace.

What a wonderful XMas I am having NOT !

[The Crusher]

Sorry to hear that... I had the same problem with my first Sony 500A burner. In my case it was allready dead when I got it.

It didn't spin any disc and it "tried" to read any disc for 1-2 minutes and then informed that "Please insert disc in drive" or something like that.

Well... I returned it and I got new one and I haven't had any problems since that. All I can do is pray for it won't get broken

[slice-n-dice]

Yep this just happened to me, exactly the same. It was working fine, then took longer and longer to read disks over a day or two, then today will not read any disks at all (have a batch of datawrite DVD-R and DVD+R which worked fine before, won't even read CDR or even written DVDs or DVDs).



Looks like a return to retailer job :/

[SonyUser]

Hello slice-n-dice,

Sorry to hear yours has failed as well.

Can I ask how long you had the drive before it failed ?

Did the discs get really hot ?

Mine is being sent back to retailer today for testing and hopefully a replacement drive, but I know that they don't have any in stock at the moment so I could be in for a long wait.

Hope you get yours replace soon.

[slice-n-dice]

Thanks,

I had it for about 5 weeks. I must say I didn't notice the disks getting hot, and I also tried testing with it outside of my case and I felt underneath and it was not particularly hot. Maybe the motor failed completely and no power is getting to it now?

I sent mine back to Avery Berkel (International Repair Division) - Sony's official repair centre I think. Sony tech support gave me their number when I said I think it has died.

So I have sent it to them yesterday.

[gravy]

I got the DRX500UL on 12/8. I burned a few DVD-Rs & +Rs, some CDs, ripped a few DVDs, etc. It had done a few weird things, like take over an hour to burn at supposedly 2x, but overall was working ok. Even though external, it hadn't even left the building.

Then yesterday, it was not showing up in device manager. Ok fine, remove firewire, reinsert. Usually does the trick. It's nowhere to be seen. Tried it on 3 other computers with firewire ports. Same thing.

Hadn't used the USB 2.0 interface, so hooked it up to my machine with USB 2. Saw the drive, burning programs recognize it. Reads discs ok. Try to burn a DVD+- anything. Sense error.

Now I may have still kept it if the USB part worked correctly, figuring the firewire ports may reset after a firmware flash, etc. Not worth the risk on such a new product.

For what it's worth, the drive in this unit looks different than the 500a, but looks identical to the 'replacement' drive seen around, but not in existence.

Best Buy didn't have any more (I've only seen the one I got), and I wasn't planning on 'exchanging' it anyways. I have an A05 also, so all I lose here is the $20 I spent on +R media.