greetings all
just wanted to post a lil back so hopefully i too can help someone out as so many here have helped me out .

I bought the liteon 5005 in january of ought 5 and was actually most impressed with the quality and have been using it extensively , and i mean extensively , since then . It had its little quirks and weird things would happen from time to time (main thing that "bugged" me was the delay in starting to record unless the disc had recently been inserted ) but all of them are not that much of a drama for the price and all the rest of the times it worked beautifully .
However something REALLY weird happened just the other day , it was set for a timed recording for 1 hour (not the timer just the easy guider timed record) and it spat the dummy and recorded all the way through to the "disc full" alert on the display , now i got home and found this and thought nothing of it but then it failed to finalise the disc and i began to worry , i tried many tests and it kept failing with more and more frequency until it would no longer recognise a DVD-R (taiyo yuden so i knew it wasnt the discs) , yet after more testing it would still recognise and work perfectly everytime with DVD+RW ....and this was freaking me out ...yet my main source of recording is DVD-R so i was most perturbed indeed .
the next morning i called the place i bought it (JB hifi in oztralia - for $330AU) and they said as per any retailer would really "oh well have to bring it in for warranty fix , should be back in 6 weeks , maybe 4" ...now im just not that patient of an individual , so i pulled the thing apart , saw that it was just an PC IDE cable and power cable connected to the drive , so i went and bought a liteon 1673S DVD burner for a PC and after much "negotiation" with the portion of the original drive which poked out the front of the casing (having to turn the power on to open the drive and fiddle - it came off by pulling gently but with a little force outwards and then upwards ....slightly different to changing a PC's drive faceplate) and then i just had to connect it up and away i went , all back to normal and with only about and hours worth of worry and effort i was back in action recording , twas even able to finalise the disc the original drive got half way through finalising and failed .
the ONLY drawbacks are that
A) the casing doesnt fit back on superbly with the new drive as it sits flush against the top of the cover. (had to gaffa/duct tape the new drive in so its fairly secure and cannot move around - ahhh gaffa/duct tape is there nothing you cannot do
B) the front faceplate has to come off the new drive otherwise it wont fit through the slot for the drive
C) the original front faceplate doesnt sit on the PC drive and is just slotted in the hole at the front at the moment to keep the dust out but im sure ill bodgy up a solution soon enough and either way i didnt have to miss recording a darn tootin thing for 4-6 weeks .
so hope this helps someone and if anyone wants pici-tures of the "operation" juts post back and ill either post em or send em to u
or any other questions about the "operation" just post and ill try my besterest
thanks and hope today is a good one for you