Disk Drive Having Trouble Opening And Working

[buckdog05]

Hello! My mom is having an issue with her Toshiba Satellite L305-S5907 laptop where sometimes the optical drive only opens and works after she restarts the laptop. It is running Windows 7 Ultimate.

The drive appears to work fine after the computer is restarted but seemingly randomly stops working. When I pressed the button on the drive before restarting today, the light flashed on the drive but it did not open, and it did not read a disk when I used a paperclip to open the drive.

Soon after restarting about 10 minutes ago, the drive worked but when I just tested it again, it did not work.

Do you have any idea what could be causing this issue?

Thanks!

[Tripredacus]

It could be that the drive is going. Does it do this both when on Battery and when Plugged-In?

[Ponch]

It sounds 99% hardware problem.Keep the computer on Bios screen (press F2 or Esc at startup) for 1/2 hour, then push the button. If it doesn't open, it's a 100% hardware problem (most probably power related). Maybe it's still under warranty?

[buckdog05]

Thank you very much for your help.

The laptop doesn't seem to act any differently when it's plugged in or on battery, but when I tried unplugging it I think the drive was also working when it was plugged in.

I might try seeing if the drive works after waiting 30 minutes at the BIOS screen, thanks!