7200i is no longer detected

[John Farewell]

Hi Folks,
After 2.5 years of use and a couple hundred burns, my drive would (intermitently) not be detected by the O/S (98). Now it's not detected at all. I Installed another drive and it (Memorex) works fine. With nothing to loose, I tore my drive apart and found magnetic (iron) filings scattered about inside the drive. A metalic dome over-top of the spindle had broken off into several pieces. I cleaned off the spindle, the lens, and the rest of the CCA. Now when I power-up the system activity light and the drive light toggle back and forth for 30 sec., then windows loads and does not detect the drive.
Either the drive has some kind of boot-up sequence (spining-up the spindle) or one of the chips has suffered damage from the FOD.
I may just shot-gun components untill something happens, or buy another (non HP) drive. HP's response so far has been, TOO BAD.
Any help or information from others is much appreciated!
Thanks! John Farewell

P.S. This thread has been moved from  Disk to Optical Jukeboxes & Drives. -HP Forum Moderator