Two days ago when I was trying to burn a CD in Ashampoo Burning Studio, it said “No compatible CD recorder found.” I went into Computer and saw that my DVD Drive was not listed there with my other drives. Then when I thought about it for a second, I remembered thinking a week ago that it looks odd and something looks missing. Well just then it hit me what was missing, my DVD Drive.

I looked to see if it was in Device Manager and it wasn’t listed there so I went and had a quick look around the internet. After seeing a few possible things I can try, and getting some advice, I decided to do a little troubleshooting to see what was going on. Was it my operating system not detecting the drive, was it the BIOS, or did the drive crap out. I went into the BIOS to see if it was disabled but it wasn’t, then I tried to boot an Ubuntu LiveCD. No luck there either. It seems to be a hardware problem.

Now it was time to figure out if it could have been a loose connection somewhere, my computer failing, or the drive dead. After a bit of thinking, I decided to take the drive out, check it and put it back. I did that, no change. I then later on thought that maybe I can put my sisters drive in my computer and that will tell me if its the drive, or something deeper. After swapping the drives and powering up my system, my computer detected the drive and started adding drivers for it. My computer was fine.

So the problem lies in the DVD Drive, its broken. I suppose its better there something being wrong with the drive than something having a deeper problem. It was a relief figuring out what the issue was. Now I have to figure out whether to replace my drive or not. If I do, it is going to be an internal one, which will lay me back about $150 New Zealand for a slimline DVD Writer. For how much I do use the thing, I don’t think replacing it, or even buying an external drive is worth it.

I only use the drive for ripping CDs and burning files for friends to DVDs. And even that is rare. The only time other than that is when installing software, but that usually only happens if its a new Operating System install. I don’t think its worth my paying to get something that will be hardly used and just for those purposes. I am probably better off keeping my money and putting it towards a new system, or just getting something else. If I do even need to reinstall Windows, or any other OS, I could always borrow my sisters drive for a few hours.