Most (all?) recent macs use Matshita slot load drives. (the tray loaders are more often Pioneer I believe?)

Slot load optical drive are by their nature much less durable than tray loaders. If you have an out-of-warranty slot load drive, I would recommend replacing it with an external firewire (or USB) drive. macsales.com sells good drives in very good enclosures. They also sell bluray readers (and burners!) if you're interested, but be aware that their read/write speed is much lower than a regular drive, something about being bluray makes their CD/DVD speeds really stink.

You should never consider regular use of a slot load drive. (as in for example, making a backup every day to CD, or making 50 copies of a disc, etc) They just weren't meant for heavy use. I consider the optical drive in my mbp to be "only if you have no choice". It's an unfortunate necessity that the new imacs all use slot load drives.


I work for the Department of Redundancy Department