Lenova Think Centre DVD replacements & upgrades

If this is something your planning to do in your own machine then be aware of one VERY important fact. Despite the fact the front folds upwards that feature is merely to allow easy removal of the leads from the back, to remove the actual drive itself fold the carriage flat and lightly pull the dvd eject cover down then push the dvd from the back out the front of the case.

Dont try what I did and try to remove it from the back by pushing the front, its physically impossible.

Anyway the new dvd-rw is now fitted, a Samsung SH-S222A. The master/slave dipswitch was already in the correct position thankfully so all it needed was to be cabled up. Its currently doing its 1st burn as a test. Which seems to play ok in the computer so thats a good start.

The mystery of the bad burns

I have been using Ashampoo Burning Studio 7 since it went up from version 6 and recently its been creating a lot of coasters with bad or incomplete burns. I tried slower speeds, different media and even upgrading the firmware on my Samsung TS-552U all to no avail. Even burns at 8x were crapping out on media cleared to 16x so I figured the burner was on its last legs as its about 5 or 6 years old now. Then I tried different software which seemed to work ok and set alarm bells ringing so I upgraded Ashampoo to version 8 and tried that.

Burnt at 8x, no problems all ok. It seems the longer you stick with an older version the more likely it'll crap out on you.