Dell Mini 9 + External CD/DVD drive

[rickbman]

I just purchased the Dell Mini 9 and got it with Ubuntu (my first foray into Linux territory). I purchased it with the external CD/DVD drive that Dell was offering and it seems to be acting a bit finicky.

If I plug the drive in while the computer is already booted up into Ubuntu then it doesn't read the drive at all. Last night when I was first playing with it i was able to get it to work by plugging it in before I booted the computer. Today though, if I plug it in before booting the computer it gets as far as the Dell screen during the boot up and the progress bar gets about half way across and then stops.

A friend of mine that is a bit more familiar with linux showed me how to try to manually mount the drive through the terminal and even that doesn't seem to work.
the command he showed me was:

sudo su
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt
and it returns this:
mount: block device /dev scd0 is write protected, mounting read-only
mount: block device /dev scd0: can't read superblock

[rickbman]

Nevermind folks... I have a sneaking suspicion that the drive has died. I tried it on my Windows PC and the drive just spins up and then stop repeated. I tried putting in a call to Dell, but I have to call back today during the hours that the Ubuntu tech support is open.

Thanks to anyone that read the thread.

[yakker.yak]

Yup, if the drive is well you should be able to just plug it in via USB and it'll just show up on your Desktop once it's powered on.

[gavinfoxx]

What sort of drive would you all suggest as a less finicky??

[rickbman]

What sort of drive would you all suggest as a less finicky??

Well the one that comes with the Dell may work just fine, I might have just gotten a bad one since it doesn't even work on my Windows PC. I haven't heard of anyone else reporting problems with it.

Hopefully they will send me a replacement and then I'll let you know if it works better.

[rickbman]

well after 2 long phone calls to Dell and a lot of extreme frustration they are sending me a new cd rom drive. Apparently delivery is going to take 10-15 days though. I'll probably be writing Dell's customer service department a nice e-mail just to let them know how frustrating dealing with there tech support is and that 10-15 is just a completely ridiculous amount of time to wait for delivery of a replacement.

[armandh]

I bought a usb CD adaptor case at amazon $37 + frt
I have several spare drives in the basement even a light scribe one.

[starcannon]

Hang in there, lemons happen, I have a drive I bought for my first asus eee, and my new mini9 likes it just fine, so I'm confident once the lemon drive is replaced you'll be in optical drive nervana.

GL and keep us posted.

[rickbman]

Oh I am sure it will work just fine. I am just ticked off that I had to jump through hoops to get them to replace it. I find that Dell will bend over backwards to help their Business Level Customers, but they give their Consumer Level Customers the run around and make the jump through hoops. It is very frustrating.

[sirebral]

Oh I am sure it will work just fine. I am just ticked off that I had to jump through hoops to get them to replace it. I find that Dell will bend over backwards to help their Business Level Customers, but they give their Consumer Level Customers the run around and make the jump through hoops. It is very frustrating.

This is Customer Service everywhere. I know people complain about the DELL Customer Service, but I found it rather enjoyable to work with them. Microsoft on the other hand. They require like $60 just to do tech support, and then the guy wants to install some software so he can take control of my PC? I think MSFT even changed it now you have to pay $60 just to talk to them, or some stupid thing like that. :mad:

I'm not that stupid.