Disable Broken CD Drive?

[james2008]

I have a broken ultrabay CD-RW drive. It doesn't recognize any discs, and one of the status LED's is constantly blinking. I'd like to disable it without removing it (for rigidity and aesthetics).

"Safely Removing" the drive disables the drive for the session. But after hibernation, it gets re-enabled.

Disabling all CD/DVD drives in the Device Manager doesn't do the trick.

Maybe there's a USB port I can somehow turn off?

It's a Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-812.

[rkawakami]

There's only three things that I can think of which might fit your needs:

- removing the connector inside the CDRW drive that attaches to the Ultrabay
- getting a "travel bezel" (FRU 13N5108)
- disable Plug-and-Play (PnP)

The first one might be the best course of action. Going with the travel bezel (assuming you can find one) will cover the Ultrabay opening but might not provide the structural rigidity as a optical drive would. If it's possible just to suppress the PnP function on the CD/DVD devices, then that might work, but I don't know if it's possible to do that.

I would say that PnP is what is happening when you wake up the system after hibernation. Since the drive is still electrically connected, Windows cheerfully makes it available again.

[SMA]

I have not verified this, but I believe it will do the job

Go to Device Manager. Right the device and select Disable.

[rkawakami]

Windows will disable the device but the Ultrabay status LED will still be lit. This means that the drive is powered and will even try to spin up a disk if you put one in. If you hibernate and wake the system, the status LED remains lit and Device Manager still indicates the drive as "disabled". I even tried disabling the Secondary IDE channel (what the Ultrabay uses) and the Ultrabay status light still remained lit.

Since it appears that james2008's drive has a defect in which it thinks it's supposed to be doing something, the only way to stop it would be to kill power to the drive.

[sparta.rising]

You can buy an ultrabay battery inexpensively on ebay. It provides structural rigidity AND extra battery life.

[james2008]

Thanks for taking the time, guys. All great suggestions.

If I remove the ultrabay connector on the DVD drive, would it still fit snugly into the ultra bay slot? Isn't that connection one of the things that keeps the drive in place and prevents it from rattling around?

[Tim M]

Thanks for taking the time, guys. All great suggestions.

If I remove the ultrabay connector on the DVD drive, would it still fit snugly into the ultra bay slot? Isn't that connection one of the things that keeps the drive in place and prevents it from rattling around?

I think you should be okay if the Ultrabay set screw is snug.

I like the suggestion above of getting a cheap used Ultrabay battery to use in place of the defective drive.