CD-RW Dead or Alive

[rtrottie]

i have a external Iomega cd-rw/dvd drive that will not play any type of disk
no dvds,computer or music.It was working good about 1 month ago.I was moving some stuff around and unplugged the drive.I have reinstalled the driver and the computer sees the drive and has assigned the drive a letter,but
still action from,the drive will open and close that's all.My main computer has
windows xp and i even took the drive to my old computer which has windows
98 and still no play from the drive.I thought maybe my cd(driver)was bad,so
i downloaded the driver from the iomega website still no help.When i put any type of disc in the drive,the little light comes on and only blinks.i would hate to throw the drive away,it is only about 2 years old

[NooNoo]

If you had the same result in two different computers with two different operating systems it is likely it is dead. You might try using a cleaning disk and seeing if it's just a dirty lens.

[slgrieb]

I think a dirty lens would generate read errors, but the drive would still show files. You might want to try updating the firmware on the drive, but I think the drive is a goner.

Reliability hasn't ever been an Iomega priority. They have a long history of trouble-prone, short lived products.