I Hate This Xbox Drive Crap! Heeeelp...

[___]

I already posted a request for an original xbox drive on the marketplace a couple of weeks ago but haven't found anyone who could supply a replacement drive.

So I tried to fix the freaking thing again (it is a Samsung "sdg-605b" btw). I opened it up and followed a disassembly guide to get to the actual laser pickup. I cleaned the top lense and the lense below it. I reassembled the drive and now it doesn't read jack shit just like before. For some reason sometimes it actually reads discs almost no problem. I am talking original xbox games, no copies. Why is it fucking with me like that? What the hell? The laser must be functional and the drive seems to be fine, it's not even that dirty on the inside. I even checked the potis and they have the exact resistance recommended for this drive.

Any tips or maybe someone who will sell me an old drive? I am going insane with frustration here and I am about to throw that piece of crap out the window.

 

[gruso]

That's the one big weak spot of these old machines. I've got two, both with crap drives, and the only solution if you want to use discs seems to be getting more Xboxes for parts when they pop up for cheap.

Two workarounds:

- For media playback from discs, you can samba share a DVD drive on your PC. If you're already sharing some folders for media it's only a few extra clicks.

- For your games, DVD2xbox. Of course that's a little difficult if you don't have a working drive, might require some lateral/nefarious thinking.

 

[Reo]

You could always get a bigger hard-drive and run all your games off of there. I bought a 500gb for mine, and it's great.

 

[dnlgreenwood]

I once fixed my brother's Xbox's DVD drive that would not open by forcefully hitting it with a screwdriver.

Hope this helps.

Oh, check the connection cables to the DVD drive... make sure they are not severed, burned, or abnormally bent. one small wire could screw a game system over.

 

[___]

Yeah, Samba shares and dvd2xbox sound like great ideas if this was meant for my own xbox. The problem is that this is my girlfriends xbox and she is not likely to be ripping any dvds/games or turning on a computer to load up games. She wants to put in fable and play. I also do not see any reason to buy a harddrive as this system is meant to emulate a couple of consoles and play a few originals but nothing more. So there is no way around buying another dvd drive I guess...

Why do companies do this? It's like with the ps2. Pretty much all iterations of the ps2 had dvd drives that I could have built better with cardboard and a laser pointer. Same with the xbox. I was so glad to actually have a samsung drive in there and now this!!!

 

[gruso]

I totally forgot, you can get replacement lasers. This is an Aussie link but should be a good start:

http://www.quantronics.com.au/products/xbox/lasers

 

[Ravnos]

Yeah, Samba shares and dvd2xbox sound like great ideas if this was meant for my own xbox. The problem is that this is my girlfriends xbox and she is not likely to be ripping any dvds/games or turning on a computer to load up games. She wants to put in fable and play. I also do not see any reason to buy a harddrive as this system is meant to emulate a couple of consoles and play a few originals but nothing more. So there is no way around buying another dvd drive I guess...

Why do companies do this? It's like with the ps2. Pretty much all iterations of the ps2 had dvd drives that I could have built better with cardboard and a laser pointer. Same with the xbox. I was so glad to actually have a samsung drive in there and now this!!!

Honestly, replace the hard drive with a big one instead and then copy her games to it for her. Once they're on the drive, she won't have to worry about it, just pick the games from a list in the launcher. It's not much more difficult than putting a DVD in and playing the game from that. I loaded almost all of my legit XBox games onto my hard drive just because it was convenient.

 

[___]

Ok guys, thanks for all the advice! I am going to replace the laser pickup now. It seems the drive has stopped reading dvds alltogether so no dvd2xbox until it's fixed.

@Gruso: thanks for the website, I ordered from Austria instead of Australia though ^^. cheaper for me hehe.

 

[Titcher]

I hear that if you replace the drive with a non-xbox one(PC drive), it can still read discs, it just loses the ability to read original xbox games, so I guess there's potential in replacing the drive and only playing backups.