Samsung DVD Burner no longer pining for the fjords

Its dead. Its gone to meet its maker, literally as it is being returned and will likely end up back with Samsung. It will burneth no more, except perhaps if they melt it down to recycle it.

I purchased the drive, a Samsung SH-S182M from Newegg.com in October 2006. It worked well for awhile, burning efficiently at 16x, reading discs with aplomb and otherwise acting as a good DVD should. Unfortunately it recently seemed to have decided to have an early midlife crisis, and it began burning at only .7x-1x, a far slower speed than it is rated. Burning a CD of baby photos should not take almost an hour.

The drive also began to have trouble reading my cds and dvds, giving I/O errors and making playing games from the CD or DVD Rom impossible (thus confirming my dislike of games that require the original cd or DVD to be in the drive in order to play them, but that's another story).

Luckily for me, NewEgg.com has a 1 year return policy for defective hardware and they have courteously and promptly issued me an RMA. The Drive is on its way back to them, and I hope their exchange process goes smoothly and I have better luck with the replacement drive.

Update: Newegg replaced the dead drive with a comparable Lite-On Drive quickly and efficiently and in a very customer-service focussed and friendly way. No fuss, no muss and great customer service. If you're looking for a great online computer hardware vendor that sells great stuff and backs what they sell check them out.