How do you do it?

I usually close mine by pushing lightly at the end of the tray, until the 
drive seems to "sense" this and pulls the tray closed the rest of the way.

I know of course probably you should more properly use the tray open / close 
button, but I find it is often faster to drop the disc on the tray, then 
push it lightly, rather then reaching for the button which on my drive is 
below the tray, and thus partially hidden from sight (my PC is on a low 
table next to my main desk, so I sit higher than it.)

A friend of mine says doing it "my way" can damage the drive and / or the 
tray mechanism - I can understand that if you bend or ram the tray closed, 
but if you just gently touch it until it starts closing by itself?

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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Stefan Viljoen <pov### [at] polardcom> wrote:
> I usually close mine by pushing lightly at the end of the tray, until the 
> drive seems to "sense" this and pulls the tray closed the rest of the way.

  Don't you mean the cup holder? ;)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

> Stefan Viljoen <pov### [at] polardcom> wrote:
>> I usually close mine by pushing lightly at the end of the tray, until the
>> drive seems to "sense" this and pulls the tray closed the rest of the
>> way.
> 
>   Don't you mean the cup holder? ;)

That's how I broke the first one!

Then this nice kind person explained in easy words and some real spiffy but 
terribly complicated pictures that you put that silver round thingy on 
there.

Now I just need to figure out how to get the silver side to be down, and not 
the side with the label thing on it.

;)
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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On 11/13/09 13:54, Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> Now I just need to figure out how to get the silver side to be down, and not
> the side with the label thing on it.

	Yeah. That label causes that side to be heavier and have a natural 
tendency to be the down side. I sympathize.

-- 
The missing link between ape and civilized man has been found. It is us.

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I am using CD/DVD drives since the earliest days of CD-ROM drives. If I 
remember correctly I had my first drive in the early 1990's. I always closed 
my drives your way and never, ever, did a single drive die because of this. 
A few died from a bad case of acute CD-label detachment, though. More DVDs 
became (temporarily) unreadable because of using aforementioned labels.



The gear mechanism that opens and closes the drive's tray is meant to 
operate this way. You just should not use excessive force. And you should 
wait until the drive is fully opened before you try to close it by pushing 
the try in. If you don't wait, it should not matter much, either. Part of 
the mechanism is a rubber band transmission that should just be skidding in 
case you try to keep the try closed by force or try to prevent it from 
closing by force. The mechanism is designed this way to prevent a stuck CD 
from destroying the drive.



Now, if you use the "emergency eject" mechanism when a CD is stuck by 
inserting a straightened paperclip into the "emergency eject hole" something 
is likely to give. Hopefully the stuck CD will become unstuck, but if you 
apply enough force something might actually break. So better pray to Anoia 
before trying this ;-)

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"Stefan Viljoen" <pov### [at] polardcom> wrote in message
news:4afdb19f@news.povray.org...

> A friend of mine says doing it "my way" can damage the drive and / or the
> tray mechanism

Regular DVD drives are dirt cheap, so who cares? Not that I've seen a drive
damaged that way. The optical mechanism will die, get dusty, misaligned...
etc, or the technology will become obsolete long before failure due to
pushing the door. But if your friend is overly concerned about mechanical
failures, he shouldn't be pushing the button anyway (which also would
eventually fail) but use software "eject".

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On Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:22:14 +0200, Stefan Viljoen wrote:

> I usually close mine by pushing lightly at the end of the tray

This is how I have done it for tray-loading drives.

Jim

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wrote:

> I am using CD/DVD drives since the earliest days of CD-ROM drives. If I
> remember correctly I had my first drive in the early 1990's. I always
> closed my drives your way and never, ever, did a single drive die because
> of this. A few died from a bad case of acute CD-label detachment, though.
> More DVDs became (temporarily) unreadable because of using aforementioned
> labels.

Ah, good!
 
> Now, if you use the "emergency eject" mechanism when a CD is stuck by
> inserting a straightened paperclip into the "emergency eject hole"
> something is likely to give. Hopefully the stuck CD will become unstuck,
> but if you apply enough force something might actually break. So better
> pray to Anoia before trying this ;-)

Anoia indeed. This happened with my DVR - it ate one of my DVD-RWs. The disc 
is in the tray on the unit, and it absolutely refuses to eject. It -has- no 
emergency eject hole that I can spot. It's a useless DVR anyway (an old LG 
unit) that's got a very serious software bug that makes it virtually 
unusable if you record more than about 40 entries into its video library.

So I'm considering taking it out back and taking an axe and / or hammer to 
it to get my disc back.
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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somebody wrote:

> "Stefan Viljoen" <pov### [at] polardcom> wrote in message
> news:4afdb19f@news.povray.org...
> 
>> A friend of mine says doing it "my way" can damage the drive and / or the
>> tray mechanism
> 
> Regular DVD drives are dirt cheap, so who cares? Not that I've seen a
> drive damaged that way. The optical mechanism will die, get dusty,
> misaligned... etc, or the technology will become obsolete long before
> failure due to pushing the door. But if your friend is overly concerned
> about mechanical failures, he shouldn't be pushing the button anyway
> (which also would eventually fail) but use software "eject".

True, they are inexpensive, but if you can avoid spending money 
unnecessarily...

My current drive is an LG and I'm pretty pleased with this one. Its been 
going about 2 years now, no problems. Previous LG drives did at three month 
intervals regular as clock work (had 4 of them in one year!)

But this one is doing quite well. I'll take the eject suggestion under 
advisement!
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> On Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:22:14 +0200, Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> 
>> I usually close mine by pushing lightly at the end of the tray
> 
> This is how I have done it for tray-loading drives.
> 
> Jim

Much more convenient - than reaching for the button below the tray.
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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