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R Krause · Guest

I have a CD-R drive and it makes high pitched noises while it tries to
read from CD-Rs and CD-RWs that it has written to. What causes this?
The drive has never been able to read CD-Rs that it has written to no
matter what brand and color of media I use. However, it can read
commercial pressed CDs just fine with no noises whatsoever. Same when
it comes to burning CD-Rs. Is this intermittent squeaking noise normal
when a CD-ROM drive is having trouble reading CD-R media? What causes
it?

TIA,
--Randall

Davy

Sounds like the optical block is having great difficulty, usually the laser or it's sensor chip itself, without proper data from the disc you'll get incorrect tracking, focusing and spindle speed (disc rotation speed) etc which will upset the TOC, Table of Contents or control data.

The beam as to travel from the laser through a prism then the beam modulated by the data is reflected back through the prism onto the sensor chip (this chip is highly susceptible to static damage) normally seen at the bottom of the optical block.

Laser is polarised light the action of the prism is to seperate the return beam from the laser beam itself.

The only thing I can think of is to either change the laser or optical block as they are sometimes referred to or get a new CD unit which is more viable, having said that I have known certain brands of writeable CD's to cause problems on the odd unit.

Davy