DL320 G5 DVD drive causing boot failure

[Jerry_Baxter]

Hi - we have a number of DL320 G5 servers which the majority have a problem with their dvd drives ...

Systems running Windows Server :
System does not recognise DVD drive

Systems running SLES 9 SP3:
Failure at boot into Linux giving 'Invalid Geometry : 64 physical heads'

Interestingly, swapping the failed drives around the servers sometimes they boot/recognised fine, sometimes windows->Linux moved drives gives the same error as a Linux one! So i am ruling out operating system specific problems.

BIOS level on the servers is : 2.10 (yes, i know it's up to 6.10!)

DVD drives are TEAC DV-W28E

Im begginning to think that this is not actually the drives going u/s, more like some sort of incompatibility on the hardware - does the BIOS version REALLY make a difference? DMA settings?

HP's answer is to keep sending me replacement drives, fair enough but now that some of the 'failed drives' work in other systems i feel there is a more underlying (low level!) issue....

Any help received gratefully!

Thanks