Upgrading the optical drive on my laptop
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Thread: Upgrading the optical drive on my laptop

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
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    886

    Upgrading the optical drive on my laptop

    I have a laptop with a DVD-RW drive, and I noticed that many laptops have pretty similar optical drives in them. I know that not all laptops are the same and many have custom components, but is there a standard type of optical drive that some of them use?

    I would love to upgrade it to a Blu-Ray burner if I could.

    My laptop is a Lenovo IdeaPad G780 (59352497), and the DVD-RW drive that I took out of it has the model Philips & Lite-On DS-8A8SH20C.

    This is what the port and drive look like:
    http://i.imgur.com/AD4Njqv.jpg
    http://i.imgur.com/PZtCtOk.jpg
    http://i.imgur.com/mCkO3Cj.jpg
    http://i.imgur.com/sVvg0aB.jpg
    http://i.imgur.com/K91xEdd.jpg
    http://i.imgur.com/5TgQxxb.jpg

    Visually, most of the laptop optical drives I see appear to be similar, though looks can be deceiving, I wanted to know if these are some standard design or not.

    I also noticed that little tab (noticeable in the last two photos) that seems to be designed to allow the drive to screw into my laptop's chassis. Is this standard too, or was this some custom addition added to my laptop specifically? Would this tab be something I could de-attach and screw onto the new drive? I saw what looked like screw holes in the same areas on some of the drives I looked at.

    And finally, the drive has some custom plastic attached to the front so it pretty much matches up with the rest of my laptop's design/casing on the edge. Is this also some standard in that I can detach it and re-attach it to the new drive? I couldn't figure out how to take it off.

    So finally.... if this would work and I can upgrade the drive, any recommendations? There aren't a lot of options out there, especially if I want a Blu-Ray burner. These two were ones that seemed ot come up often:

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BUDT8RQ/

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ODDCH06

    (Hmm, prices seem to have gone up, that first one was about $35 a few days ago)

    Are these any good? The second one seems to just be a newer model of the first one, but I am not sure the extra features warrant the higher price. I tried to google it, but couldn't find much solid information on what this M-Disk support is other than something that somehow increases longevity? Seems the biggest advantage is that the newer model supports BDXL... though it mentions 100gb triple layer, I thought BDXL could go up to 128gb quad-layer?

    Any advice on all this?
    "A train station is where a train stops. A bus station is where a bus stops. On my desk I have a workstation..." - William Faulkner

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 1999
    Posts
    493
    Looks like you need a 12.7mm drive to fill that bay.
    The Tab on the back of the old drive will need to be transferred to the new drive (that's what holds the Drive in the Laptop).
    As for the Faceplate, it will most likely have to be changed, the new drive will have a Flat Face on it.
    This is unless you can find and buy a Blu-ray drive for a Lenovo somewhere (doubt you'll find one anywhere).
    You will need software to take advantage of the new Blu-Ray Drive, some come with it and some don't.

    Any reason you're not interested in an External Blu-Ray Burner?
    No, it won't be quite as fast as an Internal Drive but it will get the job done.

    This one that you posted should fit except for the Faceplate: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ODDCH06
    This one should work also: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...1329-_-Product
    Last edited by bugspop1; August 1st, 2016 at 10:14 PM.

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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Posts
    886
    Yeah, I just measured it, and got about 12.8mm/0.5 inches. Does this mean only a 0.5 inch drive will fit, or anything 0.5 inches and smaller? Most of the drives I found were 0.3, and a few 0.4, I didn't see any 0.5 inch drives.

    And I don't want to go external because I just want everything to be in the laptop, I don't want to carry extra stuff around with the laptop, not to mention the speed. I will likely be using it to watch movies more than burning anyway, but might as well get the burning feature too since it's not that much more expensive than just a blu-ray reader.
    "A train station is where a train stops. A bus station is where a bus stops. On my desk I have a workstation..." - William Faulkner

  4. #4
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