My Grandson has a Packard Bell Easynote H5 laptop and the DVD drive is playing up. I have searched for a replacement drive without much success and was wondering if it would have to be replaced with a Packard Bell drive or would ANY laptop DVD drive do the job. Thanks for any advice.
If the laptop is only used on a desk ie at home (ie not being carried around) then an alternative is to build your own, or you can buy one 'ready made'. I use USB 2.0 external enclosures such as these ~ and just use a standard 5.25" optical drive ie DVD-ROM or DVD-ROM/CDwriter combo or DVD burner in, been using a few of these for a few years, or you can buy external drives off the shelf, i've always preferred to pick my own components. Other than that i don't know if you can find a replacement plug-in drive, they tend to be too expensive anyway, hence why i use external enclosures. Another option is the smaller, more portable DVD drives, they're popular due to the new mini sized laptops called netbooks that don't come with built-in DVD drives due to the size of the netbooks. You could look on eBay for this kind of thing ~
Ah, i figured that was the case, worth a try though. Another thing to consider is how often a DVD or CD drive is actually needed. Can a USB stick be used instead, or my favourite is a generic SD card reader from a pound shop used with a cheap SD card. Other than that i guess someone will hopefully post with alternatives re a proper plug-in laptop drive, or one of my suggestions above, a slimline DVD drive of some sort. Many years ago i had a laptop that needed a CD drive and i bought a very expensive portable drive, though these days the slimline USB 2.0 drives can be found very cheaply on places like eBay. The laptop itself has to be carted around to friends' houses and whatnot so i don't think the slimine external drive is such a bad idea ?...
Don't get me wrong Creaky, the idea has not been completely ruled out, just that if I can get a replacement drive it would probably be better for him.
According to this parts list: http://www.pchub.com/uph/model/0--10818-0-1/EasyNote-H5-300DW-parts.html The replacement drive is a Lite-on LSC-24082K. Plenty of them (at least 10) on sale at eBay (US). I cannot see the interface but my educated guess is that since they don't show a "tailplate" for the optical drive, they are using the native interface and any drive should do.
