Yesterday my electronics teacher was giving away a broken CD Drive and if someone wanted it, they could take it or otherwise he would throw it in the skip. I decided I would take it and tinker with it and if I could get it working, good for me, if I couldn’t, I’d take it apart and have a look inside.

I opened the case of my sisters computer and plugged to drive into the power supply and saw that the drawer wouldn’t open. I unhooked it from the power and got the screw driver. I took the casing of the drive and had a look around for anything apparent that could be preventing the tray from opening. There was nothing I could see.

I decided to hook it up to the power without the case to inspect what was happening. I saw the problem. The tray motor was coming up as the tray was ejecting which prevented it from doing so. After about 5 minutes to manhandling the drive, fiddling with the screwdriver and various other instruments I managed to get it going. The tray could now freely come out and go back in.

I hooked the thing back up to power and the tray mechanisms were working fine. I reassembled the drive and swapped out the CD Writer to test the drive. I put one of my sisters discs in the drive (not one of mine in case it screwed it) but it managed to function correctly and worked fine. Now I had a working CD Drive and no practical use for it.

There is a small amount of satisfaction in fixing something that wasn’t working that was going to be trashed. Now I have a fully functioning CD Drive and a cut on my thumb from one of the sharp pins at the bottom of the board. If anyone is looking for a CD Drive, a couple of bucks will do and it’s all yours. :p