QUOTE(RDC @ May 26 2008, 01:35 PM)

If it was working fine before ya messed with it and now it's not that's pretty apparent when the problem happened, and since you were there the best person to know what is wrong is you, even if ya don't, and no one here is going to be able to tell ya if ya need a new drive or not and mean it until every other possibility has been exhausted. So troubleshoot it and find out...
1) Does it have the same problem from both the dashboard as well as Eject button?
2) Does the power LED flash after pressing Eject?
3) Is it plugged in? Both SATA and Power cables all the way? Tried reseating them? or other cables?
4) If you manually open it will it close via the dash or Eject button?
5) Have another drive there (or can borrow one) to install to see if it will Eject or not?
6) If ya happened to plug the drives power cable in upside down (people do this for real) and fired the 360 up it's toast for sure.
Hi RDC, thanks for your advice, to reply, I've numbered your ideas above:
1) yes
2) yes
3) yes
4) It will not open or close whatsoever unless you do it manually. I have tried from the dash and using the remote- neither trigger the drive to eject, but after you press the eject button, the message in the display on the screen changes from open tray to close tray even though nothing actually happens.. (does that make sense? (IMG:
style_emoticons/default/sleep.gif) )
5) unfortunately not but I can have a word about and see if anyone has one
6) I checked the power cable carefully and made sure that I only plugged it in the correct way, i.e. the smooth side of the connector went to the smooth side of the socket, the side with the 2 lugs went to the corresponding side too.
From this are you saying that the power cable to the drive has a specific end that plugs into the mobo and a specific end that plugs into the drive? both ends of the cable looked identical to me, the only indication I could see is that the plugs have only one way round that they will fit. (I have only fitted them to wnat I percieve to be the 'correct' way around)
Again, thanks for your guidance so far- I'm really getting to the stage where I am running out of ideas!