Laptop replacement drive - BluRay ?

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I picked up one of these last week as faulty, (and for a much lower price) just for a battery.

Toshiba Satellite C850-1G2

However on start up it seems to be performing well as good as the one I use when out and about.
The only downside is the DVD drive that has gone to meet its maker.

Which got me thinking about swapping bits and pieces over, keep the best one at home, the remainder for outdoor and work, and apart from the annoying need to use an inverter when running from the car (Toshiba uses a 20V DC supply, which is nuts imo) performs very well when used in the car, the battery has been the only failing.


Since it is all SATA fittings inside I am assuming I could replace it with a laptop specific BluRay player (possibly a recorder version as well, but certainly not essential) but never having transplanted one before are there any pitfalls to watch ot for when ordering one, and probably more importantly, does Toshiba have drivers for a machine that runs 8.1 ?

If somebody has done this before on a similar machine, let me know. Thanks in advance.
 

jeallen01

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Generally, changing a DVD drive in a laptop appears to be relatively easy - this Youtube video shows you how to do it
 

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I've done it plenty of times on client's machines (often one screw under the cover protecting the memory, this machine is no different), but not a Bluray upgrade
 

davemurgtroyd

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Do you intend to play commercial blu rays or only use them as data disks? I use several internal drives (both laptop and 5.25 full size) in USB caddies on various laptops (blu ray, HD DVD and DVD) and have found no problems using them as data disks but often have to carefully choose software to play HD media files on both blu rays and HD DVDs. This is down to limitations in the laptops in CPU speeds/power and graphics capability.
 

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I have access to the additional ram required for the laptop, it might already be in there (8GB stick).

I doubt I will be writing data to BluRay, watching a modern format movie would be the main reason, with the addition that the replacement drive might last a reasonable time before breaking.

I should really check if the spare player in the house has a small caddy inside, and try that first.
 
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