I have a Toshiba Satellite A25-S207. The Teac combo DVD/CDRW drive
reads CDs with ease but DVDs only intermittently. The noise it makes
is like a nanosecond of the searching noise and then an abrupt stop.
When it does work, there is a good deal of noise and vibration.

This drive only has a single lens that reads both DVDs and CDs. I have
reinstalled the drivers and used canned air with no result. Any idea
why the drive reads DVDs intermittently? I am trying to use the
recovery DVD to reformat the computer.

Im pretty good taking stuff apart if doing something would actually
fix the drive but I dont want to make it worse.