Lately, my internal CD writer that came with my computer has not been burning from my harddrive the way it use to. It use to burn at the fastest speed without any problems, but now I get error messages whenever I try to burn a CD. So I slowed the burn speed down to the medium speed and then the slowest, and it works occasionally.

Someone told me that my writer could need replacing because it's about 4 years old. Ideally, I'd like to go ahead and replace it with a CD and DVD writer. Is 4 years about the correct lifespan for a CD writer?

Thanks,

Craig

HP Pavillion a300n
2.6 ghz
256 ram
40gb

Well that is a question of debate.

A HDD has a MTBF (Mean Time Before failure) But that doesn't necessarily mean it will.it may go out sooner or later than the MTBF or last for years.

For what a new CD/DVD dual format 16x cost i would just replace it.saw a 16x lite-on on newegg for 26 dollars.

i burn about 4 cds a week and one drive lasts me about a year

yah, lifespan is measured in operational cycles rather than time.

Several hundred burn operations combined with thousands or tens of thousands of read cycles should be the minimum (though for older drives the reliability is lower, especially for burn cycles).

yeah, i had a pc run a linux livecd solid for 4 months and it wore out

Not in my experience,but i'm guessing if you do alot of burning then maybe so. I would try replacing your IDE cable and see if thats your problem.

no the actual drive lazer or mechanism wears out