Is my CDRW close to death??

[darkcoder]

Hello

 I have a Yamaha 2100S SCSI CDRW attached to my A4000T SCSI
 controller, that has worked flawlessly for about 8 years. Recently,
 however it has some problems in reading CDs.

 The problems usually occur when the CDRW is unused for several
 days (or weeks). During the boot the drive motor produce a noise
 different from the usual, and weaker (the CDRW used to be a rather
 noisy drive). Then, when a CD is put in, the motor does not start
 moving and again "sounds" weaker. Often CDs are not recognized. Even if they
 are, the drive motor produces a very weak noise
 and as a result reading speed is low, sometimes directory or files
 disappear from the CD, sometimes the content of read files is
 garbage (but no error message from AmigaOS) and rarely AmigaOS
 gives error messages.

 If I continue (trying to) using the drive for 1-2 days, it slowly
 begins to work better, the noise becomes louder, and finally the driver
 returns to read CDs well. After these problems begin, I didn't dare
 writing CDs.

I am afraid that the drive is slowly dying, due to its age, although
it has not been used a lot during its life (always connected to the
Amiga). Is there something I could try to avoid such problems, like
using some products for cleaning the driver lens?

[kingkleks]

There are such products although I never used one. You could give it a try or just use a can of compressed air. If that doesn't help it might mean mechanical failure. It might be possible to open it and lubricate but it could be dangerous; it is easy to damage the mechanism. If it is something electrical you probably need a new drive.

[Doobrey]

IIRC, some old drives had problems with the lens carrier sticking on its guide rails due to wear and tear over the years.
 If that's the problem,it should be a 'simple' matter of opening up the drive and spreading some thin grease on the rails to get in back to normal.

[tonyvdb]

At 8 years it sure dosn't owe you anything I would look at replacement as if the drive motor is going there is nothing that you can do. Give it a good cleaning and see if that helps use some litium grease as sugjested but not too much and give it a go.

[jlariv8957]

Sometimes the round pad up on the motor becomes dirty as it is often made of rubber, when the pad is dirty the CD doesn't turn correctly in the drive and it becomes noisy. you should open the cd drive and clean the pad with some alcohol or thing like that.
 

[tokyoracer]

Probably not the cause of your problem but laser cleaners can benifit hugely!

[oddmario]

Cheap way to clean lenses and metalparts is isopropylen alcohol.
The blue one you can buy at pharmacies and buildersshops.
Use 50/50 with water and you have the same solution as any service
technician.
Another trick is that behind the laser itself it is a copper feather
that you can bend a little bit because they get softer by wear and
tear.

All at your own risk of course.

But this is what i do.

[Tomas]

It might be dust in the mechanics as well, so you might want to try to clean out that as well as the lens. And maybe put some extra grease where it belongs, like other people here suggested.

[darkcoder]

Thanks everyone for their reply and for useful advices.
I'll try to open and clean it!!

regards

[koaftder]

a while ago i put up 2 external scsi cdrom drives on ebay. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8770495775&hc=1&hm=um.s5ddl077%3D

one is a 7 disc jukebox deal, the other a burner.

I put them up from a consignment shop, they probably wont get any bids on them, so you could probably get them for 10 bucks + shipping.  Theres 14 hours left on it. I could care less what it goes for, i just dropped off a box of stuff i wasnt using anymore at this ebay outfit last week.