Ben's Bargains

[Displacement]

I recently bought an HP dv7t laptop from a deal here on the site and overall I'm happy with it, but I wasn't thinking when I pulled the trigger and bought a DVD burner instead of a Blu-ray player. I own a lot of blu-rays and I'd like to use my laptop to play them, so is there any way for me to get and install an HP blu-ray drive? The drive door needs to be a specific shape so I think it'd be tough to do, but I'm certainly no expert.

Any advice?

[PacoDeth]

alot of times its just a normal laptop dvd drive with a faceplate on the drive door. You may be able to just remove the faceplate and reattach it to the new drive. As long as you are comfortable taking apart your laptop, you could probably open it up and remove the current drive thats in there by unhooking it and sliding it out of its slot, then take a look to see if the faceplate is removeable.

All of this would of course void your warranty I'm guessing, so do so at your own risk.

[dave_c]

It shouldn't void the warranty to take the optical drive out, but if you broke the faceplate taking it off that might not be covered by warranty, it has fragile little plastic tabs you have to flex slightly.

Generally instead of a clip holding it in, there is a screw on the back either visible or behind a hatch at the rear of the drive. There may be an icon molded into the plastic showing it is for the drive instead of a screw holding the case together.

Use a screwdriver with a very good tip, often some screws are held in with locktite and need a bit of force to break free, but optical drives not so often.