Superdrive may be failing

[Naeco06]

I've one of those CD & DVD +/- Writing drives that does it all. Had it on this machine for about 2.5 years now.

Lately, during gaming or other heavy-load computer use, I've been getting noise from it. It sounds as though it's winding up fast seemingly for no reason during times when it used to run silent. Then just this past week it did some weird crap.
I'm burning a data CD and near the end of the burn I heard what I'd describe as friction if not grinding. As though something were rubbing against the disc or vise versa while it tried to spin. Soon as it finished I checked the disc itself and everything looked fine, successful burn, CD works. But the noise was odd.
I also had it "wind up" again when I launched a game (Mass Effect, if anyone wonders) during the initial load, which it had never done before. To this point the wind up only occurred after extended program use or times of heavy load.

And the problem is that it's never done any of these things until just the last couple months. So what does this mean? Time to get a new disc drive?
I'm knowledgeable with PC use but not so much with hardware.

thanks in advance to anyone who can gimme a clue.

 

[Naeco06]

No one? Really?

c'mon, this one's easy

 

[KurrentEweser]

A new drive can be had for less than $30 nowadays. I wouldn't wait until it self destructs.

 

[Highlandcomp]

Mostly the drive is nearing its end. Usually its hard to fix drives. And not
worth the time. As somebody said you could get a drive very cheaply now a days.

 

[Lexluethar]

You could enable S.M.A.R.T. on the hard drive from the bios. Although not a perfect system, it is supposed to detect a hard drive failing prior to the actual fail.