Hi, I've just bought a new Sony Optiarc AD-7200S SATA DVD-RW drive, because my previous DVD-ROM + CD-RW IDE drives prevented me from booting into Debian Lenny, some boot errors about "ide : failed opcode was unknown" + "hdd : drive not ready for command". The errors seemed to stem from my CD-RW drive, although Etch was fine with it. I decided to splash-out & get a DVD-RW drive to replace the two of them. Lenny installed nicely & it recognises DVDs better than my old drive, but the DVD drive is noisier than I'd like for watching DVD movies, hence, I'd like to be able to reduce the spin-speed of the drive for watching DVDs.

I have Google'd around for ideas, usually about 'setcd' and 'eject' utils, but these don't seem to have any effect on the drive (I am specifying the correct drive '/dev/scd0'). The bit within K3B for setting drive max speed has no effect either. 'Setcd' gives output as if it is making the speed change, but I dont really think it is doing anything as there is no apparent change in the disc speed either audibly or with my hand on the drive front trying to note any vibration changes. Are there any other programs beyond these two I could try, specifically that are SATA drive capable?

Thanks in advance.

PS: I apologise in advance if I don't respond particularly quickly to any replies as it'll probably be tomorrow night before I can get back online to check, but I just wanted to make the post. I should've posted earlier this evening but I've been trying to get solve it myself.

Look up hdparm.
They use that for setting hard drive speeds, but it's also got a -E switch for setting cd-rom drive speed. I googled around 'hdparm dvd speed' and saw some promising links. It's worth a shot anyway.

Those utilities will not set the speed for every program because the power management of the drive relates to how fast the drive will be set.

You can try the following command.

mplayer -dvd-speed 4 dvd://

If it works, in your desire program try find a similar setting.

ASUS makes the quietest optical drives that I have used.

I THINK that hdparm is being replaced by sdparm as hdX designations are being dropped in favor of sdX designations. Not sure if all the functionality that was in hdparm is available in sdparm as of yet.