f.r3d wrote:I hadn't used the CD drive of my laptop in a while and I just realised yesterday that I cannot read CDs anymore. I am wondering if it is a hardware problem or a software problem.
If it's truly a
CD drive (and not a DVD drive), then hardware becomes a distinct possibility. What's worse, CD-era optical drives tend to have proprietary interfaces, which makes swapping out drives impractical.
And that's the core of what you need to do: vary either hardware OR software and see which one fails. If you have a USB optical drive, or can borrow one, use that to rule out hardware. Alternately, boot from a live medium using a totally non-Debian distro. You don't necessarily need a full desktop OS with every bell and whistle; just a minimal install and (optionally) a light DE/WM of your choice.
But before you start downloading .isos and all, there are a couple of things worth trying first...
- Look in your BIOS to verify that the drive is recognized at the hardware level
- Boot your machine and do a quick
ls -l /dev/cd* at the CLI to verify that the drive is recognized by the OS
- if all your testing so far has been with data CDs, try a couple of commercially-burned music CDs
One last thought: given how inexpensive DVD drives are these days, you may decide that it's not worth your time to do a detailed differential diagnosis (particularly if your drive is a true CD drive). There's a wide array of external USB DVD drives available online for under $30USD.