>>Generally, the lifespan of a CD/DVD drive (the way I use it - a lot) is 2-3 years, speaking from experience. My Creative CDRW is approaching its upper limit now, and the cleanup didn't help any. I figure the wear of the mechanism is causing it to lose precision. It can read any old CDs, and the ones it recently burned, but not the ones it burned between 2 and 16 months ago, and it's having problems recognizing blank CDs as well. Sometimes I have to insert the same blank six times until it's accepted.
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>The problems you describe are almost exactly what I am experiencing. I don't mind spending $5 for a can of compressed air. But if I take anything apart, I find more spare parts later than originally installed :-).

Good... you may make two drives from those parts then :)

>I was thinking about buying an external DVDRW drive and use it for both DVD's and burning regular CDs. I use my CDRW now for backup so going to DVD will make it easier (as I will be able to do more at once).

I'm also looking at a DVD fryer (never accepted the word "burn" - CDs look much more like pancakes than wood), but I think I'd go for an internal. I already have too many cables and never enough space on my desk.