fix cd/dvd drive plzzz. with cherr6 on top

[GTD-Carthage]

I've been having this strange problem with my DVD/CD-RW drive recently. It's a fairly old Samsung TSSTCorp TS-H429A that's been around for several years now. It's failing to read just about anything but I can't quite make out the problem. Whether there's any kind of disc inserted or not, double-clicking on the drive icon in Explorer just brings me to an empty directory that, according to the Properties window, is "0-bytes free, 0-bytes used"

I've tried updating its firmware from the manufacturer's site but it didn't help change anything. Any solution to this?

[kea]

Buy a new one. Sony or Pioneer. Samsung CD/DVD drives are bad.

I have a fine old Lite-On (Sony) combo drive, it's circa 3 years old. It's tray opens only after third try, but it reads scratched discs as new.
My Pioneer DVD-RW drive reads cheap DVD-R discs written at highest possible speed (combo fails to read them, though).

[zYnthetic]

Sorry, dead drive. I've just gone through the same thing, twice. The original (Lite-On DVDr) lasted 11mo before failing to read DVDs. Volumes reported @ 0files, 0kb. The replacement lasted 5 days, failed reading DVDs and CDs. The lens is either dead or misaligned. Combo drives usually have 1 lens, DVDRs have 2 (which explains being able to read one type and not another).
Have a new Asus DVDr now. Hopefully the same problem won't arise.

[Jethro]

To be honest kea's right. You can try to insert CD lens cleaning disk (although it needs to be actualy read by the drive to do it's work) or disassemble CD and try to manually clean the lens, but buing a new one is probably the best solution - my expirience with all kinds of CD drives indicates that if they fail once they'll keep failing in most unexpected moments, so the easiest solution is to simply buy the new one and give your old drive to the utilization. Also, keas preferred manufacturers are probably the best (perhaps Plextor is good, but to be honest I don't even know if the company still exists), but they're not the cheapest ones. You can as well go for LiteOn or even Samsung again. I don't recommend LG though, I got two of their CD drives long time ago and they both literally exploded (ripping CD inside to shreds).