My Benq 1620 is half dead - I think?

[pyst]

I can't complain if it actually has - it has worked well for a long enough time to satisfy me. Anyway it seems to be reading but not writing - is that normal for a 'dead' drive? I expected it to die completely when it did so thought I better check before I give it up, as a writer, completely. It has failed on three different brands of disc that it has successfully written on previously. Moving it to another computer didn't help - both computers are okay with my shitty Liteon writer. I'm gonna miss this Benq <sob>.

[redwudz]

Unfortunately, it does sound like it's dying. You can try two things. upgrade the firmware and clean the laser lens. Maybe even lube the DVD laser slides. I don't give a lot of hope for either one of these ideas, but you have little to lose at present. Start shopping for a new burner in the meantime.

Here's what it may look like inside. This is a CD burner, but DVD is the same:

[pyst]

redwudz,
Thanks for your interest. I finally managed to get the guts of the drive out of the case - the faceplate was a problem until I discovered through a website that you need to open the tray door first.
Anyway I oiled the slides(glides?) and cleaned the lens as you suggested and did manage to burn a couple of discs successfully before it reverted to it's 'half-broken' state (reads but doesn't write). I noticed it 'clicks' a bit when having difficulty reading and writing.
I'll tinker around a little bit more with it but I'll probably resign myself to the fact that not much lasts forever - it may still be useful as a reader for those discs that my other reader/writers can't read. Thanks again.

[CrayonEater]

What brands of media are you using? The discs used by major brand names change constantly. Verbatim is the only major retail brand that I know of that uses the same disc from batch to batch. You might want to give that a shot before tossing your drive.

[Timoleon]

redwudz,
Thanks for your interest. I finally managed to get the guts of the drive out of the case - the faceplate was a problem until I discovered through a website that you need to open the tray door first.
Anyway I oiled the slides(glides?) and cleaned the lens as you suggested and did manage to burn a couple of discs successfully before it reverted to it's 'half-broken' state (reads but doesn't write). I noticed it 'clicks' a bit when having difficulty reading and writing.
I'll tinker around a little bit more with it but I'll probably resign myself to the fact that not much lasts forever - it may still be useful as a reader for those discs that my other reader/writers can't read. Thanks again.

My Gateway AR-230 died in a similar fashion after giving good service for three years. I tried all the things you tried as well --- and sure enough, the "click of death" (I thought only zip drives did this!) signaled the final impending doom of the drive. Strangely, the last successful thing it did was read an old SVCD I had burned about four years ago --- couldn't read a DVD, though