iMac G4 17" - DVD drive not reading DVDs

[NightSurge]

I have a staff member with an iMac G4 1.25GHz CPU, and recently it has stopped reading DVDs. This is very annoying because I need to install Leopard on this machine (how I found out it no longer read DVDs). I tried a CD and it read instantly as normal, but whenever any DVD is in the drive it doesn't even spin up.

I looked online and the only issues I've seen similar to this all say that a new drive is required. Does anyone know if there is any other things I can try before purchasing a replacement or external drive? Is there a way to reinstall the driver like through Windows Device Manager? Perhaps a firmware update?

Here is the Drive Model:
Sony DVD RW DW-U10A
Revision: A43h
Serial Number: EA69F8E1

 

[Kharn]

What version of OS10 is on there at the moment mate? an do you have a old external hard drive knocing about out or a 8GB flash drive you can format temporarily?

 

[NightSurge]

Sorry I almost forgot about this thread. It is OS X 10.3.9

I have an external hard drive I could possibly use. It's 250GB and I can format it in OS X disk utility. Got any suggestions?

 

[Kharn]

macosxhints.com - Create a hard-drive based OS X installer

 

[NightSurge]

Wow! Does that work with a USB external hard drive? I don't have a firewire external one.

Also, does this let you do the upgrade option of the install? I don't want to do a full/clean install and want to preserve files/settings already in place.

I really need the hard drive for other purposes, but using it this way for one time won't hurt. I basically use it as a replica drive that holds all my PC images so I have 2 copies (since I'm extra careful ) in case one drive fails. So I could change the usage temporarily and change it back after this is done.

 

[Kharn]

Yep it works with usb devices, and i am sure it dose allow for the upgrade option.

Firewire is only so popular with the mac croud as every sodding mac has that failure of a interface.