Anatomy of an Optical Drive

Opening the Optical Unit

To open your optical unit you first will need to remove the tray door, where normally the manufacturer logo and several other logos and seals are printed on. Just follow the directions shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: How to remove the tray door.

Figure 7: Tray door removed.

Next, just unscrew the bottom part of the unit. This is very simple; usually it is just a matter of locating and unscrewing four Phillips screws.

Figure 8: Locating the screws.

Removing the bottom metallic cover from your optical unit the first thing you will see is its logic board. You will also need to remove the top metallic cover. To do that you will need to remove the front panel. It has two locks, one on each side of the unit. Just push them with a small screwdriver as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Removing the front panel.

After removing the panel, you will be able to remove the top metallic cover from your unit. Removing it you will see your unit’s mechanical parts and the optical pickup.