Philips & BenQ VAD6038 DVD Replacement Drive for Xbox 360 Review

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My DVD drive was not recognizing that there was a disk in it until I had opened and closed it numerous times. I checked on X Box live and found my warrenty had expired, however I could send in my X Box and Microsoft would replace the drive for $100. I looked up "X Box 360 DVD Drive" on Amazon and was pleasantly surprised to find drives for as cheap as $29. All the comments suggested that changing the drive was easy after viewing clips on YouTube, I am partial to Toshiba so I ordered one. Once my drive came, I found appropriate clips on YouTube and realized that unless you are replacing the original with the same brand of drive you can't just swap cards (once you watch the clips you'll see what I mean). Several YouTube videos suggested that you can use a different brand of drive if you flash the new drove with the old drives firmware, I ordered a ESata cable and decided to give it a try, I got half way through and my head was swimming, I realized this was way beyond my capability, so I ordered a BenQ drive. I followed the instructions on the youtube videos for opening my XBox and replacing the card and drove and I was back in business.

Several notes: The BenQ drive is the hardest to replace cards on as there are 9 wires sodered to the card, the Toshiba drive was connected with ribbon connections so no wire cutting would be required.

Find and watch the appropriate YouTube videos to determine the type of drive you have and if you feel comfortable performing this work, you might decide you would rather just send in your XBox.

I felt it was an easy change out, but with $29 for the Toshiba drive, $4 for the ESata cable and $41 for the BenQ drive I didn't save that much money, and the time I spent was probably just about as long as it would have taken for Microsoft to get my XBox back to me. Of course if I would have watched the YouTube videos prior to ordering I would have saved time and money. Hopefully my experience will help someone.

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If your xbox 360 has any of the following but not limited to

*xbox 360 recognizes games as dvd's but will not play them

*After game disc inserted Xbox 360 displays open tray error

*Games take longer than usual to load and sometimes they never load all together

This Ben Q drive will fix all your problems and bring your system back to life like when it was brand new.

This replacement drive must be flashed with dvd key from original xbox 360 dvd drive before it will recognize games correctly. The process of flashing should probably be left up to professional installers but it can be accomplished by average users with the right amount of reading.....The program needed to flash is called jungle flasher,it can be googled. The flashing process is not modding the console to play copies, it is just copying the dvd key over to the new drive from the old dvd drive, so it is safe on xbox live and you probably won't be banned from xbox live 99% sure

Also because of the flashing process this model drive is able to replace any model that you currently have in your 360 ( toshiba, lite on , samsung, benq, and hitachi)

Philips & BenQ VAD6038 DVD Replacement Drive for Xbox 360

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Jesse has a great review of the product so I won't repeat his points. Instead I want to mention that depending on the drive you currently have in your 360 you may be required to do some hardware modification (e.g. soldering) in order to successfully switch to a different drive. If you're not comfortable with that kind of thing I'd check which drive you have in your 360, google for the instructions for Jungle Flasher, and check to see whether or not you'll need to do any hardware mods. If you do, you may want to have a professional swap it out.

Thankfully my drive didn't require any hardware modification and I was able to swap it out (relatively) easily. New drive works great and was well worth the ~$30 to replace my old drive.

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I have purchased two different drives from this manufacturer. I have not seen any signs of use on either unit. Unfortunately, both units have went out within 6 months of buying them. I could have bought a brand new unit from the manufacturer for the price I am having to spend on now a third unit, which needless to say, won't be purchased by this company. Beware of the other reviews, and watch what your buying.

I will note, that the drives did in fact, work. They did not last a great deal of time, but they did work. That is the only reason it did not get a 1 star from me.

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Bought the drive to fix the annoying "disc read error" on my 360. Ended up just taking the laser out of the new drive, and swapping to my old drive. Works like new again. No more waiting 10 minutes for the laser to finally read, and no more games dropping out in the middle of playing either.

Great fix for a cheap price.