Slot-Loading vs. Tray-Loading Optical Drives

Question

Slot-Loading vs. Tray-Loading Optical Drives

I was wondering how many people prefer Slot-Loading drives over Tray-Loading drives and why. This is because Apple uses a slot-loading drive on all Macs.

My personal preference is Tray-Loading because my try-loading drive can read 80 mm discs and if there is a power outage, I can retrieve my disc without having any trouble and put it to use in my laptop.

Home Built, Windows XP Pro, Intel Core 2 Duo, Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT, 1 Gb RAM, Acer AL2216W 22" Widescreen Display

Posted on Nov 13, 2009 2:19 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Nov 15, 2009 10:52 PM in response to Dan Matulonis

trays can break off, and there are more moving parts. Witch means there is more parts to fail.

Reply

Answer 2

Nov 16, 2009 12:18 AM in response to Dan Matulonis

You can make a slot-loading drive slimmer, which is probably the main reason it is used on most of the Mac designs (except the Mac Pro where space is not an issue). Also, it is difficult to implement a tray-loading optical drive that is vertically-oriented (as in the iMac), and not have the disc fall off the tray. 🙂

You can eject a stuck disc by pressing and holding the mouse button during startup.

It is true that you cannot use non-standard discs in a slot-loader optical drive; it will get jammed inside. You'd have to get an external FireWire or USB 2.0 optical drive if there is a recurring need to use non-standard discs.

Reply