My optical drive doesn't show up.

A while back I noticed that when I would go to eject a music cd from my G4, it would take forever to eject or I would get the gray restart screen. It progressed to where my CD drive would stop working several minutes after I rebooted. (It would not show up in my systems profile.) I have run both Sysetm Utilities and Disk Warrior with no long term success. I even bought a new drive and installed it. It also no longer shows up unless I let the computer sit over night and even then I can burn a few discs only to have my computer freeze. Upon restart, no drive. I have also reset my PRAM. I have considered reinstalling my OS but since my drive isn't being seen by my computer, I can't boot from my install disc.
Does anyone have any ideas, I am stumped. Thank you in advance for your help!
Dual 867 MHz G4 - 1.5 GB DDR SDRAM Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Hi
If the drive is not showing up immediately following startup, and you have replaced the drive with identical symptoms, then I would suggest trying a different power supply plug, since the Macs allow for a few HDD's, you can use one of the extras. You may want to try reseating the existing connector.
If the drive does show up, but subsequently disappears, change Energy Saver to Sleep -NEVER & uncheck "HDD sleep whenever possible".
Post back with the newer drive info, too, and whether you ran PatchBurn to get iApp.Finder burn support.

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Hi,
If the drive is not showing in the list of bootable devices, you can be fairly certain that it has suffered a Hardware failure and will need to be replaced.
Regards,
DP-K
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Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience

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Regards,
DP-K
****Click the White thumb to say thanks****
****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****
****I don't work for HP****
Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience

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Loren48 wrote:
The drive did function after the upgrade, but I haven't used it for a long time.
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Could be due to the laser beam after a long time sitting idle. I think you need to clean the lenses using something like this (scroll down 1 page)
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Hi Everybody,
So I put a CD in my CD/DVD drive on my white 2009 Macbook and it made a funny sound. The CD did not register with the system. And when I open Disk Utility, it doesn't recognize the optical drive at all.
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My optical drive doesn't show up.

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