Urban Giraffe

Installation & usage

Installing a new drive into a notebook is a straightforward task, but it does vary according to the manufacturer of the notebook. In my Acer Travelmate this consisted of:

1. Sliding the CD release switch on the underside of the notebook. This detached the drive, which was pulled free
2. Remove the IDE converter on the back of the old drive
3. Unscrew the mounting case from the old drive
4. Fix the mounting case to the new drive
5. Attach IDE converter
6. Insert into notebook

The colour was a good match for the Acer, but a 2mm gap exists around the top and left edges. This is not overly worrying as the drive is firmly attached.

Once installed the notebook was then powered-up, and the operating system shortly decided it had a new piece of hardware. Everything smooth going so far, so time to insert a commercial DVD.

Having never used a slot-loading drive before, it takes some getting used to. When a disc is pushed far enough in, a mechanism takes over, and sucks it efficiently inside. This mechanism is both loud and disturbing, and then proceeds to make what can only be described as a munching sound while it correctly aligns the disc hole on to the internal spindle.

Noise levels return to acceptable levels during normal operation, and playing a DVD movie results in just a murmur from the drive.

Ejecting a disc is as noisy as inserting one. It is a very robotic sound, and sounds like an effect from a sci-fi movie. Possibly all slot-loading drives make a similar noise.