Yesterday we’ve covered about Early launch Anti-Malware Boot-Start Driver lets you choose which boot-start drivers to be initialized in Windows 8, today we’re going to tell you about yet another new Windows 8 feature Zero Power ODD (Optical Disk Drive) which is enabled by default, read the explanation below.
In previous versions of Windows like Windows 7 when there is no media in the Optical drive, power to the optical drive was not managed by Windows, where in Windows 8 power to the optical drive will be automatically turned off when there is no CD/DVD in the tray. This feature is called Zero Power ODD (ZPODD). This feature applies for the optical drives that connected through SATA connector.
Though there won’t be any negative impact with this behavior however unexpected behavior of media-writing software like Nero could be encountered by the user. You can set optical drive power status to always-on by disabling Zero Power ODD feature in Windows 8, here is how.
Open registry editor and navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\cdrom\parameters\Select ZeroPowerODDEnabled and set its value to zero. To enable the feature again enter the value existed before.