Blu-ray burner for W520

Hi all,

After lurking here on various forums, I ordered a W520 this morning. I am asking for advice on which Blu-ray burner would be compatible with my new W? Is replacing it as simple as sliding the DVD drive out and swapping the railings?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Denis

 

While I don't know what kind of measurement the drive space is on the W520, I can see getting a burner would be quite pricey.

 

The spec sheet is saying 12.7mm high. Isn't it standard? Is $160 reasonable for a Blu-ray burner?

 

If the W520 has the same drive as the T510, then it's a super easy replacement.

1. Remove OEM Drive.
2. Remove plastic insertion tab at rear of drive.
3. Remove plastic guide (at side of the drive).
4. Remove face plate of OEM drive.
5. Remove face plate of Bluray Drive.
6. Install face plate of OEM drive onto the Bluray Drive.
7. Install the two plastic guides on the Bluray Drive (Rear & Side).
8. Install unit into your W520 and you're done.

***On my T510 the side plastic guide is held by two small screws. My bluray drive only had one hole drilled. I used double side tape and the one screw to hold the guide. It's really sturdy and doesn't move at all.***

C.

 

Thanks C. so now is yours an LG or Sony drive?

 

Paid $100 for my Panasonic UJ-240.

 

I have a Panasonic UJ-220 salvaged from my dead Vaio, can this be used in the W520 also?

 

UJ-220 is PATA while the W520 is SATA.

 

It's a Panasonic UJ141 ALAA-A.

Bought it off Ebay, although I hear the Asus portable Slim Drives have similar units inside.

C.

 

Can someone who owns the Panasonic UJ240 verify that the Panasonic UJ240 fits well and works with the W520?

 

Lenovo Thinkpad UJ-240A UJ240A Blu-ray burner SATA R500 | eBay

This is the one I got for my T510. It is 12.7mm and Sata. It should work for you too.

 

Slim Laptop Panasonic Blu-ray Burner DVDRW Drive UJ-240 - eBay (item 370495943999 end time Apr-23-11 11:13:01 PDT)

this is where i bought mine. $119 only and free shipping.

It is the same UJ-240

 

Made a video swapping the existing DVD with the UJ-240.

Primitive But Effective: Lenovo W520 and a Replacement Blu-Ray Drive

 

Yeah, that's what I'd do, buy a UJ-240 and swap the bezels. I think I paid $99 for my UJ-240, though mine's external.

 

Great video. Thanks for sharing.

I think I'm going to go with an external UJ-240 instead of an internal for my RAID-enabled W520.

 

What interface is on the external UJ-240 for connecting to the W520? If it's only USB2 then it's going to take forever to burn a disk.

 

This enclosure: Black USB 2.0 External Slim Line Enclosure. For IDE and SATA 12.7mm
This drive: Centrix-intl.com - Panasonic UJ-240 Wholesale Price, Ships Same Day!

I wonder if there is a eSATAp or USB 3.0 enclosure for slimline drives because I could easily use that.

One counterpoint... a 6x burner still doesn't max out the real-world USB 2.0 speed last I checked but let me know if I'm mistaken.

 

BTW, Centrix also sells this drive in Ebay Slim Laptop Panasonic Blu-ray Burner DVDRW Drive UJ-240 | eBay

I have an LG WH10SLS30 happily burning 2x BD-RE on USB 2.0 (just make sure to find a good USB cable). Don't know if 6x will saturate it either.

 

Seems 6x doesn't overload USB 2.0 ...

Tested my WH10LS30 with Verbatim 6x LTH discs, it was able to reach 6.0x (27,xxx KB/sec) at certain points with ImageBurn. It starts off a 2.8 then increases as it gets further along (inner groove to outer groove?).

Again, just be careful with the USB cable you use. I had a few lying around that wouldn't let the PC properly detect the burner. Took an old Belkin USB 2.0 cable from my printer and it worked better. USB 1.1/2.0 cables are supposed to be universal so there is no visual reference to indicate a cable can handle the higher data rate (except USB 3.0 which are coded blue).

Update: Spoke too soon, had a verify error towards the end of the disc (on LG). Could be the discs, writes at max 2x on the Panasonic connected to ultrabay.
http://club.myce.com/f142/panasonic-uj-240-question-317894/
Ok, must have been the discs since another burned at 2x but also failed to verify with the 6x LTH discs (on the LG). I had one more of the older 2x LTH and that burned/verified just fine (On the LG). Panasonic UJ240 reported 6x LTH max speed was 2x. It burned and verified okay. 2 out of 4 failures, no success at 6x, returning this cake to amazon and ordered some 6x from digistor. Hope that set will be better.

 

Hey, all. Was reading through this thread and pursued installing the UJ240AS in my W520. Initially it worked fine. However I just discovered that it no longer is accessible. When I look at the hardware configuration the drive is showing an error "Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19)".

Any ideas?

 

This may be of interest.

 

Thanks for the advice. Went to the recommended link but no joy.

However, I found the following reference to fix the code 19 I was getting:

(Code 19) - Microsoft Answers
Tried that step by step and it corrected on the step where I removed the registery key named "UpperFilters" that had a value of "GEARAspiWDM". The value in it seemed to point to an iTunes entry when I googled it. Once removed and rebooted, my CD/DVD drive is now error free!

I now have an error when iTunes opens with regard to a registery entry for importing and burning CDs and DVDs. Onward ho!

 

zerodivide, thank you so much for this post! It was VERY helpful to me.

FYI, I made a follow-up post on the W520 owners thread (URL below), and I included a link to your blog post and video, giving you credit for helping advance my subsequent research.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/566338-lenovo-w520-owners-thread-533.html#post8166213

I just wanted to thank you directly in case you didn't see the other post.

Cheers!

 

hello forum maintainers, i posted a topic unrelated to this thread, i was going to come back and delete it as i posted it on the main forum now. (my first day using this site) but now that i came back here to delete it, it was gone! it was about w520 finishing (something metal above the thinkvantage and volume panel buttons keyboard) am i imagining things ahha. what happened to it. did you delete it for me????

 

I am asking for advice on which Blu-ray burner would be compatible with my new W520?

I just wanted to add an important caveat. Not all W520s ship with the same optical drive, even those with the same machine type. For example, I have a new W520 (4270) and mine shipped with a Sony Optiarc DVD RW AD-7710H Optical Drive. This is a 12.7 mm drive, but it is not the same model drive that others have been talking about. At this point I do not know whether the bezel holes line up with the Panasonic UJ240 6x Blu-ray Burner I bought to replace it.

I am posting this just as a warning. I wish I had checked which model drive I owned *before* I had ordered the replacement drive.