cd drive "not ready" + burner install question

[Nate 0]

Hi all, about 3-4days ago my cd drive started giving me a message that it's "not ready" with options to re try or cancle

 

I've not changed anything on my comp lately that I can think of.

 

I did get a cleaning cd (with the little fuzzy thing on it) and a can of air to blow it out. no luck with that... I admit I'm a smoker and my rig is about 4 yrs old, I haven't had much reason to get inside it over the years. but I did blow out the dust when I put in some memory and another time when I put in a network card a while ago.

 

anyway, my drives are pritty full and I wanted to put in a cd burner but I need the cd drive to get at the drivers on the suplied disk, I did check the mfg website to d/l them but -grrr- they have 2 burners with the same name but one is series 1xxx and the other is series 3xxx and I see no info on the one I bought about it's series >_<

 

what I got is an MSI Optical CR52-M w/ nero 5

 

my os is NT 4.0

 

I also bought a used cd drive (tested good) for $2 just in case mine is dead.

 

the burner is also asking for 1 gig of free space for image recording...atm I don't have a free gig on any drive...720+/- mb on C drive...others are full.

 

I'd hate to buy another $80 or so in zip (250) disks to store another gig of stuff that I want to put on cd's...

 

the point of the mission here is to clean and empty my drives onto cheap cd's rather than spend more on the dang zip disks.

 

I'm not the most savy comp user but I have managed to keep my rig running well so far by myself surfing the web for info.

 

I wouldn't really mind haveing the new drive insttalled for me, but I'd rather do it myseld if I can ;(

 

if I must have the 1 gig ( of swap space ?) on C drive...I think I'll need to uninstall an app that I may rather keep.. ;(

there are some apps on C that my comp came with that I've never used and I don't really know what I'd do with them.

 

anyway, if anyone can give me some advice it'd be great

[GuitarGuru 0]

Nate,

 

Good news is this. If you are wanting to install a CD Burner to get data off your PC, I am pretty confident the 1 GB requirement wouldn't really apply for your immediate use. That requirement would be if you were copying a CD. The ideal way to copy a CD is to read it into the computer, then burn it back on a blank disk. Obviously you would need at least 700MB of free space to do that, more realistically 1GB. I know some people copy CD's on the fly from a CD-Rom to a Burner directly, however, in my experience I have gotten better results using the image method. As far as installing a burner yourself, it is literally 3 wires. You could simply remove the bad CD-Rom and put the Burner in its place. I would not attempt to install the burner in addition to your CD-Rom, but rather instead of. Also, I'd buy one that comes with Nero Burning Rom software as it is very reliable.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Jason

[Nate 0]

excelent ! stupid me, I thought the burner was just for burning, not general cd viewing/playing ;(

so yeah my drives are packed with image files from my portfolio project Quake 3 pro frag movies on and on...

 

as far as copying music, I'd more likely be making mix cd's to play at work in a regular cd player ( I work in a metal shop, not an office ) so I'd be taking a song or two off a cd, not the whole thing.

but it won't matter anyway since I'll have loads of space when I get the existing clog of stuff off the drives.

 

thanks Jason, it's a big help.

 

oh I did buy a MSI CR52-M with NERO 5