Slight weirdness with BenQ drives

Thought Id mention this since the BenQ and NEC are two popular cheap
DVD writers.

Ive been noticing since my main system with the NEC is out of service
at the moment since I RMAd my MB --- that the BenQ drive on my second
system (1640) light stays on after you use it. The 'in use" light
stays on after doing a burn or copying stuff so that it seems like its
constantly spinning forever.

This made me paranoid since a few posters claimed they had high
failure rates with BenQs though most say they are fine.

I looked it up and saw others mention this too on the net with other
BenQ drives like the 1655. They all claim the light is on even when
its not spinning so Ill assume its not spinning all the time. I guess
its normal for BenQs just a weird peculiarity of the brand. If you
eject the disk the light does go off.

I don't know about those drives, but some brands use the light as a Disk
Inserted type indicator. On my Plextor, the light has different colors or
blinks indicating different operations, but a light does indicate something
is in the drive.

Clark

wrote in message
...
Thought Id mention this since the BenQ and NEC are two popular cheap
DVD writers.

Ive been noticing since my main system with the NEC is out of service
at the moment since I RMAd my MB --- that the BenQ drive on my second
system (1640) light stays on after you use it. The 'in use" light
stays on after doing a burn or copying stuff so that it seems like its
constantly spinning forever.

This made me paranoid since a few posters claimed they had high
failure rates with BenQs though most say they are fine.

I looked it up and saw others mention this too on the net with other
BenQ drives like the 1655. They all claim the light is on even when
its not spinning so Ill assume its not spinning all the time. I guess
its normal for BenQs just a weird peculiarity of the brand. If you
eject the disk the light does go off.

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 15:05:46 GMT, "Clark" wrote:

I don't know about those drives, but some brands use the light as a Disk
Inserted type indicator. On my Plextor, the light has different colors or
blinks indicating different operations, but a light does indicate something
is in the drive.

Clark

Someone else did comment they wished it had different colors to
indicate different states but unfortunately its only green. It freaks
me out cause Ill see it 20 min later and the light will still be on
you get this gnawing feeling like its spinning all the time though
apparently it isnt.

As long as its normal I guess it doesnt bug me. I was going to swap
out the NEC to this system to see if it was defective etc or some
system fault but luckily I saw some posts on it saving me the trouble.

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:55:46 GMT, wrote:

Thought Id mention this since the BenQ and NEC are two popular cheap
DVD writers.

Ive been noticing since my main system with the NEC is out of service
at the moment since I RMAd my MB --- that the BenQ drive on my second
system (1640) light stays on after you use it. The 'in use" light
stays on after doing a burn or copying stuff so that it seems like its
constantly spinning forever.

This made me paranoid since a few posters claimed they had high
failure rates with BenQs though most say they are fine.

I looked it up and saw others mention this too on the net with other
BenQ drives like the 1655. They all claim the light is on even when
its not spinning so Ill assume its not spinning all the time. I guess
its normal for BenQs just a weird peculiarity of the brand. If you
eject the disk the light does go off.

This is a normal quirk of BenQ DW drives. On most drives, the LED is
an activity indicator light, meaning, it only goes on when the drive's
doing something active like reading, or initiating, or burning. On
BenQ drives, the indicator is on so long as a disc is in the drive,
and is ready to do your bidding. It's a dual colour LED. When it's
reading or spinning up, it blinks green to indicate activity. When
it's burning, it blinks red.

Not sure if the DQ series drives do the same thing, as they don't have
the same Philips/BenQ lineage -- the DQ series is supposed to have
been designed by TEAC.

---------------------------------------------
Thanks.


MCheu