How Long Will 360s DVD Drives Last?

[sharplayer]

Couple days ago my XBOX crashed. The DVD drive died while i was playing Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike and it made a huge scratch on it ( probably not playable anymore ). I just bought a new one from Ebay for 40$. Nothing good there. So it took my XBOX DVD drive to last about 4 years till it died. So how long do you think it will take XBOX 360s DVD Drives to brake down. ( It also depends on how many hours you play a day and so on.... )?

1- If you play like 24/7
2- If you're like HardCore or something
3- Couple hours a day
4- Time to time
5....

[Killer 57]

My Xbox Drive never died on me and it never gave me any problems.

[mjmaskrey]

The Xbox's had 3 different kinds of DVD drives put in them...offering 3 different grades of quality:

Excellent: Phillips
Good: Samsung
Sheeite: Thomson

So life will depend on which brand you have. You can tell by looking at the holes in the DVD tray but I can't remember off the top of my head which is which. Best way to keep your drive running is to not play DVD films.

Not heard anything on the make of the 360 drives yet...but I do know the DVD tray is flimsy as hell!

Edit: Here you go!

http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/Images/DVDComparison.jpg
:)

[sharplayer]

Samsung is the Best

Thompson: 1st Genereation Drive ( Early 2002 )
Philips: 2nd Generation Drive ( mid 2002 )
Samsung: 3rd Generation Drive ( since than thats the drive that you'll find in most recent XBOXs )

[Killer 57]

Mine has holes in so I have the Samsung.

[backin-strachan]

Will this be the same for the 360s as in there will be different types of DRIVES???

[just Jam Man]

My mate had a really weird one with lots of holes in! Mine lasted threeyears without dying! and towards the last year i played alot! Hopefully the 360 rives will never die!

[Blaze Lord]

Will this be the same for the 360s as in there will be different types of DRIVES???

Probably. Microsoft will always be looking to renegotiate with parts suppliers, and as DVD drives have been around forever now, and are made by many, many different companies, it seems likely that they'll eventually find someone who's willing to make better and/or cheaper drives.

[sharplayer]

I think they should make DVD drives that protect the disc even when the 360 falls on the side while turned on and the disc in place.

[Tobes]

lol Thomson drives cant play cd-rs HAHAHAHA

Good old Samsung here. My xbox is only a version 1.2 so I was well chuffed.

[Blaze Lord]

I think they should make DVD drives that protect the disc even when the 360 falls on the side while turned on and the disc in place.

I don't think this is much of a concern to Microsoft. If your 360 is really in that precarious a position, keep it horizontal.

[original efunk]

I got my original Xbox at launch and it has the Thompson drive in it, never failed, and I played it for a good 3-4 hours a day for the life of it.

I've been playing my 360 like it's going out of style, and I'll continue to until they run out of good games, which will never happen.

[paytoplay]

I got my xbox on release day 2002, it has a thompson drive and started giving error messages after about a year and became unplayable after two. Then I got a phillips in 2004 and still have it now, although it is slightly dodgy(takes ages to load games).
Someone said earlier that it is a good idea NOT to play DVD's through your xbox/360, Why? Is it just a wear & tear issue??

[Blaze Lord]

I have no idea why that would be true, pay. I have a feeling that this is just a random, bad luck anecdotal issue. What I mean is, somebody happened to have a DVD drive that was destined to fail at some point, and they happened to play a few DVDs before that failure. And they thought that since they played DVDs before their drive failed, the drive failed because they played DVDs. (Post hoc ergo proctor hoc. "After it, therefore because of it." The rooster fallacy. The rooster crows before the sun rises, and the rooster thinks the sun rose -because- he crowed.)

I cannot think of any reason why a video DVD would be worse on a drive than a game disc.

[Steve]

I agree blaze lord, it seems more of an accident in the blue and out of nowhere for a game drive just to collapse like that. Maybe if you have literally played your Xbox 360 for 2 months straight then perhaps it will fail. DVDs can be played on the Xbox 360 but you shouldn't want to do it alot becuase it is wasting your driver away on something that you can do the same with on a DVD player. Youd rather be playing all the games you have than using DVDs on it.

[mjmaskrey]

It's more to do with the constant high speed disc access on films as opposed to games that are mostly bursts of disc access.

There's no definite on it I guess...just seems to be common knowledge that Thomson is a poor drive and best to avoid DVD playback.

:)

[Blaze Lord]

Well. That is something I hadn't considered. On the other hand, though, wouldn't game discs require the head to do more moving back and forth on its rails, even if the rotation motor has to do less spinning?

[original efunk]

A constant RPM is easier on a drive than bursting, less spin-up and spin-down.

[Blaze Lord]

So, it's settled- DVD movies easier on drives than games?

[original efunk]

Definitely.

When you play a movie the drive only has to spin-up once, and then it stays at a consistent RPM throughout the movie.

When you play a game you are constantly revving the drive up, and then letting it spin down.

Compare it to your car. Do you get better gas mileage stomping down the peddle everywhere, or keeping the RPM's at the same speed.

I don't think either playing movies or games is going to wear out the drive, it's made to take it, it's a gaming console. But watching a movie is easier on the drive than a game. Just put in a movie, listen to the drive, and then play a 360 game. It's a noticeable difference.