Posted by Les on 08/26/07 14:24

My 5005 recently expired in that the drawer would no longer open. £150
down the pan and I only bought it in 2004. I decided to take a look
inside and discovered the internals were basically a PC ribbon cable
and PC drive power supply, exactly the same as you would use to plug a
new DVD drive into your PC. I had an old knackered Pioneer drive
around and plugged that in to the 5005 chassis and it worked, to a
fashion.

Had a search online and many had tried to swap out the drives etc,
using the next model up, however four years later and the 5005 has
well and truly been superceded. I took a chance and bought a brand new
(current Aug 2007)
LiteON LH-20A1P-487C 20x DVDRW Super all write Kit PC drive @ only
£23 and plugged it in, and it all works perfectly (copy to DVD,
formatting menu etc)

Well chuffed. Then I thought I'd have to secure the drive to the
outside of the 5005 case as it's quite big. However I took the drawer
door off and placed it inside the old 5005 chassis and it lines up
perfectly. There is an stainless steel frame on the old drive which I
used to secure the new drive slightly. A piece of foam on the left to
stop the drive sliding, and some BlueTak on top so that when I put the
lid back in the drive couldn't move.

All bolted back together and working perfectly, apart from the
original 5005 drawer cover, which I seem to have mislaid somewhere!

So don't chuck it out, try and recycle first.


Hope this helps some of you.

PS: I wonder if this is the same for the HDD models with say an 80gb,
could you just swapout to a bigger drive?

[Back to original message]