Hi I'm a fairly experienced pc user but have just bought my first laptop and need advice. It's an advent 7055 full P4 (not celeron or mobile) 3.06ghz with HT ! I am looking for a dual layer dvd-rw drive but it seems all this laptop stuff is very specific compared to pc parts. I had almost settled for one one ebay when i noticed the reason for sale was,,, "The device was purchased from PC World to upgrade an Asus laptop, unfortunately the device is not compatible as it is set to Master. Although I did connect it to my laptop it has never been used due to the incompatibility." what the heck,,,does that mean you can't select master/slave like on a regular pc drive,,,,you have to buy a master or slave drive??? somebody please tell me ihave got this wrong,,and if not,,how do i know which to buy? any help appreciated!!! thanks
I was having the same dilemma. My solution? I bought an external drive (Plextor PX-755UF) that does everything, and quickly. And it costs about the same as an internal DVDRW drive (if you can find the right one). Yeah, it's one more thing to carry around, but that doesn't really bother me.
I searched around a little, and I found that a Pioneer DVR-K12D is compatible with your laptop. Here's the cheapest one I could find, but now that you have a model number, you could dig around & maybe find a better deal.
Thanks for that geetus! I too would not mind using an external drive as I will be using it to DJ with on the move, and am not likely to be burning discs in the middle of a gig (not whilst all the cpu power is needed for the music software anyway) My problem is that the laptop is second hand and had no hard drive therefore no system recovery files. I have put a new 80gb drive in and was going to install XP with my cd,,,but it wont boot from the disc and I think the current drive is faulty. It doesn't seem to spin up at all and the eject button does not work. I was going to upgrade to a double layer anyway so it's no loss, but now you can see I need an internal drive as if I went for an external I would have no working internal disc drive at all! So,,,,how did you find that one was compatible? does it say whether it is a master or slave? ,,, because from what I've been told they are all pretty much standard shape and size, and as long as you don't need a strange shaped bezel (mine is flat) then all you have to get right is the master or slave issue. If you just guess there is a 50/50 chance it will not work and you cn not switch them! If I can find out if my laptop needs a master / slave dvd drive then I will have a huge choice of models.
ps - I've just actualy noticed that the model you found is the one I already have! (oops, my bad) It's the drive that comes with the advent 7055 as standard. If I can find out if this drive is master / slave then I can look for another drive of the same type. Dammit, why can't laptops just be normal????
I am almost 100% sure that the drive should have a jumper on it that would let you determine whether it's master or slave. That said, in looking around on the 'net, I found LOTS of reports of problems with this drive, so if this is the only one that's compatible with your laptop, I'd get one with a warranty. OR If you wanted to go with an external, check in your BIOS & see if you have a "Boot to USB" option in there somewhere. If not, there's probably a way to boot to a floppy (assuming you have one of those) and install a DOS USB driver.
You would think there would be a switch,,,but oh no, they have to make it arkward don't they! The pioneer dvd-rw in my laptop defo has no way of switching between master and slave. Not on the drive itself anyway, though I have heard that many drives can be switched with firmware,,,but I really don't want to go there. There surely would never be only one dvd-rw drive compatible with a particular laptop,,,,that would be insane. one of the other makers would want to compete with it wouldn't they? From what I have read,,,I just need to find out if my laptop requires a master or slave drive,,,,then it will be just a case of finding one to suit. My problem is knowing which one i have? ps - I have no floppy on my laptop and there is no way to boo from usb (the usb drivers only work once windows is installed so its a catch 22 situation) I think I've got around it though,,,, Using a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adapter I put the laptop HD in my desktop and used the XP set up disc to create a partition so it could be seen in 'my computer' in windows. Then formatted it in FAT32 so it will take a DOS 7.1 install. then,,,,,i went to bed! Next step is to copy the I386 folder from the xp cd onto the laptop hard drive then put it back in the laptop. It should then boot into DOS where typing in a few command lines it should start the windows installation using no floppy or cd! It's amazing what google can find for you!
HA! Nice workaround. As for whether or not you can find another internal dvd-rw, I'm not sure - I looked, and didn't turn anything up. Wow - googling "advent master" turns up some really strange things. Anyway, glad you found a way to get windows on there. I was looking at my desktop to see if windows could tell you anything about master\slave status, and in the device mgr, under cdrom properties, it says mine is in Location 0(0). It's in the master position on the IDE cable, too, so maybe you can determine it from there.
