I have come across lots of 360's with the tray sticking when trying to eject and having to tap the front of the drive while its trying to eject to get it to spit out the tray. My own tray has been sticking since about 2 months after purchasing the xbox from new (about a year and half). I say it sticks because sometimes it will open on its own like theres nothing wrong.

Since i recently had the 3 rings on my own box, While I had it open I thought I would have a look at the tray and grease it up thinking thats all it needed. When I took the tray off I found that some of the teeth were broken off and this must be where the gears lay when the drive is closed and is the cause for my tray not opening.


The Broken teeth on the underside of my tray

I realise most of us would notice the sound of these teeth breaking and most often I would think the problem is the tray needs greasing, but I thought I would share my fix for reference.

As the teeth had not broken all the way down I thought that I would try to raise the gear that contacts them to see if it could make contact again.

Looking at the drive from the front All you need to do is remove the band then remove the wheel the band goes around by pulling gently like below:


Pull up evenly both sides and it will slide off.

Then the large gear will then slide off easily, the one I needed to raise.


The main Gear

As the gear cups over a pivot point All I needed to do was raise it slightly by shoving something inside the cup before putting back over the point but carefully making sure its not raised too much so other teeth dont make contact. I only needed a small rise of no more than a millimetre. So I used a polishing head out of my dremel kit, and sliced it up to the required size. Its only made out of felt so was easily shaped with a stanley knife.


Felt Polishing Head.

There was enough play in the gear to allow a raise of a couple of mm, before it would rub on the underside of the upper wheel, so there should be no grinding of the wheels making more problems for the future.



I put it all back together and it now opens every time.

You do know the tray is supposed to look like that right?

ok this is where i reaally look dumb and say no...

Ok I humble myself and say this in my defence, that when i first looked at it, i thoiught it was a fairly clean break but when i look closer it looks like the bottom isnt straight so assumed that it was indeed a break.

So seems as i now look a total 'tard, please can you either explain to me, or point me in direction of info on why this is like it and more important why my tray now does not stick.


Thanks for opening my eyes

The top of your drive casing might have been pushed down slightly. Mine was, and it was sticking, I took a screwdriver, pryed it open a little and all is well. You taking it apart probably fixed it.

All of the Samsung trays look like that...



...and even with the notch there the gear still has more than enough of it to grab a hold of...



The notch is there to allow the tray alignment pin to pass thru there since it's attached to the mechanism that raises and lowers the sled and it moves side to side, while the tray moves back and forth. If that notch were not there the tray would hang about 99% of the way closed because that pin could not move over. Really hard to get a pic of it, but you can look in there with the lid off when the tray is almost closed and right before the sled starts to raise, you can see where the alignment pin has to cross thru there.

The reason the tray sticks is the belt slips and the spindle magnet is pretty strong. The belt doesn't have enough of a hold on the pulleys to break the grip of the magnet, this is why some drives open with a disc inserted, and will not when it's empty, the disc being in there makes the magnets 'hold' weaker so it's easier to break loose and the tray opens. most of the time, just removing the belt and cleaning it off will straighten it up, with the worst case being replacing the belt to get it to work again. Just taking the belt off and replacing it is what most likely did it.