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My laptop's DVD drive has suddenly stopped working. All I know is that its not getting power. Now, I don't know whether the drive has gone bad or is there some other reason.

Drive was running all right till 2 days ago. But, all of a sudden, I loaded a disc, after which Ubuntu stopped showing drive at all. Its not even getting power. I don't what has happened. Now, I am using emergency exit and a safety pin to eject drive.

However, on checking through lshw, it shows drive. Also, 'disk' shows it under devices. It even displays its serial number. Moreover, when I checked through K3B; it shows DVD drive as well, but 'no medium present'. If I keep drive ejected and then run K3B, it shows no optical device found and lshw shows status of drive as open.

Now I am confused where and what exactly is the issue. I beleive drive is OK and Ubuntu is even recognising it however the drive has gone switched off or suspended (if those things are possible).

So, please help me, how can I know whats the issue and diagnose it.

OS: Ubuntu 14.04 Laptop: Dell Inspiron 3521 DVD Drive: Built In.

Thanks.

3 Answers 3

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Can you boot from a livecd? If you can put in a bootable disc and restart, it should show you if Ubuntu is the problem, or if the drive itself is not working properly.

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A driver problem wouldn't stop the drive from having power, ejecting, and spinning up for a second when you put in a disc & close the door. It should do all those things even in BIOS/EFI with no OS running.

It sounded like a desktop DVD drive when you mentioned a pin to open it, like it should open & close on it's own, if it won't open & close then there's a hardware failure (motor, gear/belt, wire problem) and it just won't work.

But you said it's a laptop, it could be dirty & need cleaning, maybe it can't "see" any discs. Or it could still be a hardware failure & won't spin or read properly.

To rule out a Ubuntu problem, try booting from a live usb, or a live disc even.

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Have tried booting from Live CD. No success. Things are same. Brought to a technician and it seems like its an hardware issue. Strange, why Ubuntu is detecting it then !!

Anyways, have purchased a new portable DVD writer and it has started working right away :-)

Thanks all for your help!!

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