- Joined
- Dec 3, 2002
- Location
- Northwest Indiana
I read everything I could find here and then wrestled with my Pioneer DVD and Lite-on CDRW drive for quite a while in an attempt to remove them for painting. I had no trouble figuring out how to remove the bezel itself but for the life of me, I could not figure out how to remove the CD/DVD tray. The face of the tray was so big that I could not remove the bezel from the drive even though I was able to disconnect it. I felt like a complete rock for a while but I finally figured it out.
This is what I did, for those of you feeling as I did: I removed the drive from the computer after sliding the tray into the open position. Then I looked at the inside front area of the tray and noticed that the tray front could actually be removed from the tray itself. By pushing in 2 tabs (on the top of the face for the Pioneer and on the bottom for the Lite-on) I was able to slide the tray face up or down (depending on the drive) and remove it from the tray completely. Then by using a small screw driver I pushed in the plastic tabs in the metal drive body where the bezel was secured. Once I had them removed I pried away the clear LED section so I could paint the drive without covering the LED with paint. I plan to follow some of the great painting tips I've seen here to color match my drive faces to my case. I just thought someone else might be feeling like their drive was outsmarting them, just like I felt. These directions may vary for other drives, which may be why I didn't find anything clear posted explaining how to remove the tray face.
Just for the record, Cown has a great sticky about painting drive faces that explains this perfectly, but no matter how many times I read it I thought it was explaining how to remove the entire tray from the drive
This is what I did, for those of you feeling as I did: I removed the drive from the computer after sliding the tray into the open position. Then I looked at the inside front area of the tray and noticed that the tray front could actually be removed from the tray itself. By pushing in 2 tabs (on the top of the face for the Pioneer and on the bottom for the Lite-on) I was able to slide the tray face up or down (depending on the drive) and remove it from the tray completely. Then by using a small screw driver I pushed in the plastic tabs in the metal drive body where the bezel was secured. Once I had them removed I pried away the clear LED section so I could paint the drive without covering the LED with paint. I plan to follow some of the great painting tips I've seen here to color match my drive faces to my case. I just thought someone else might be feeling like their drive was outsmarting them, just like I felt. These directions may vary for other drives, which may be why I didn't find anything clear posted explaining how to remove the tray face.
Just for the record, Cown has a great sticky about painting drive faces that explains this perfectly, but no matter how many times I read it I thought it was explaining how to remove the entire tray from the drive
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