Hello,

I have a little problem with an XBOX which I got recently from ebay.

It has an Samsung drive, which shows a weird behaviour.

The drive reads discs fine and I already softmodded the xbox and built in a 120GB Seagate hdd.

The problem is, that when I press eject, the drive comes out, "jerks" one time, stays open for a few seconds, and then closes itself. I also hear weird sounds when it drives out.

I think a video can describe this better: Video

Also note that the led does not stop to flash while the drive is open, like it should normally do as I think.

I hope you can tell what's wrong, or if this behaviour is even normal? (I don't think so... )

Eject tray, and then sensitively pull it towards you. Then it should works properly.

That does not help. To be honest, I don't really know why I should pull the tray, because it opens without probems, as you can see in the video .

Yes, but it doesn't eject fully, that's why it close after few sec. Try to pull stronger (when tray is open), you should feel a jump in the machinery. It usually worked in Xboxes with Samsung drives. If problem persist, disassembly your drive and clean it and lubricate tray.

Ok, I tried it again and pulled much stronger. But it seemed to be completely open, because it didn't move at all. I don't want to damage the drive because actually it works. It just small problem for me.

Anyway, could you point me to a tutorial which parts I have to clean and lubricate?

Thanks for your help.

EDIT: I noticed another thing: The tray drives further back as on my other XBOX. So is it is not on the same level as the front when it's closed, like it would normally be.

probably need to re seat it on the ruunners correctly, which would mean opening it and aligning it by eye.

I completely disassembled the XBOX and the drive.

I removed the tray, and put it in again.

Now the problem is a little bit different, but still there:

This are the behaviours I saw while testing:

1. The tray opens without problems and stays open (works like it should).

2. The drive shows the same behaviour as before, but the time while the tray is open until it closes itself is shorter.

3. The drive opens and the led stops blinking. When I press eject to close the drive, I only hear the motor but the tray does not move. If I touch the tray only with very very little power, the tray closes.

These are the behaviours that appeared while testing. They appear in a random order.


I hope you can tell me what to do now, as the disassembling took relatively long, and I don't want to have to do this over and over again.

Have you got new Samsung drive (ver. A) or old one (ver. B )? You can find version on the label.

I think I have the one shown in this tutorial: http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/Samsung...Disassembly.htm

Have you tried actually reconditioning or replacing the drive belt?

Behaviour like this is typical of worn, ageing or a slipping drive belt but it can be caused by circuit board trace problems too.

Do a search here and you should find plenty of threads on the subject. For reconditioning just take the belt off and put it in a glass of (preferably distilled) water and microwave it to almost boiling point. Leave it there for 30+ seconds and then fish it out with a tool of some sort, I use a wooden satay skewer.

Let it cool and dry on some kitchen towel then refit it. However do not handle the belt with bare fingers or you'll contaminate it with finger grease.

I've had to do this on several of my Xboxes over the years and together with a bit of suitable lubrication of the runners and plastic gears it resolved several different tray drawer opening/closing issues. The reconditioning is said not to to be permanent but I've only had to redo it with one Xbox so far.

I will try to clean the belt next time I disassemble my drive.

At the same time I want to make sure that everything is properly aligned in the drive.

Could you tell me exactly which parts have to be aligned?

The only thing I took care of was that the nub, which is marked in the picture below, meets the "rail" of the tray.



Is there something else, that has to be "aligned"?

Now I cleaned the complete drive and reconditioned the belt like you described.

Here is a new video of the result: Video

As you can see, the problem is now more rarely, but still there.

I appreciate every kind of help to get rid of this, keep posting .

A full tutorial with pictures on what to clean and realign would be really nice. I could not find anything on the internet that is about samsung drives.