DRU-500A Suddenly Doesn't Work

[LighthouseJ]

I had my 500A since they came out and I've written plenty of discs. Without warning, when I put a disc I simply want to read (or blanks for that matter), the busy light comes on for the regular interval, goes out and I hear a tick sound and it tries to reposition itself again I guess and this process repeats until I turn it off. Anyone have a similar problem? I plan on opening up the top (where the mechanics of the drive are and see if there's some obstruction) but I wanted to check with anyone that had a similar problem. Thanks.

[LighthouseJ]

I took the covers off and am operating it while I can see it trying to work. What happens is the read head goes near the inside tracks and spins up and attempts to read for a second, then the head goes to the outside, spins down and restarts. The laser lense looks fine, nothing seems out of place but I don't know what look for besides a dirty lense. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[handyguy]

Did you uninstall it from control panel & restart your computer? Thats the first thing you do with a 500a.

btw, what are you doing having that thing open? That laser is risky.

[LighthouseJ]

Well, I recently fixed a Playstation 2 that was giving a "disc read error" (common problem actually) and I fixed it simply by cleaning the lense. It's okay, I know my way around electronics.

I have the 500A in a firewire/USB2.0 enclosure and it's only installed when it's turned on and everything is ready. When I turn the unit on, the behavior I described occurs but it never identifies the drive. Windows XP doesn't even know it's there and trying to come online.