Odd DVD drive behaviour

[Boydie]

I’ve just acquired a DVD-writer off Ebay, deacribed as tested and working.

It flatly refuses to spin a disc up when inserted.

Bizarrely, it only doesn’t spin when a disk is on the tray. If there isn’t, and I’m holding the drive, I can feel the motor spin up for about a second or two (presumably to centre any potential disk on the spindle) before stopping (presumably because it’s realised there isn’t one).

Whereas is there is a disk on the tray, it clearly starts to spin then stops after a fraction of a second.

There’s a clear difference between motor activity depending on whether it detects a disk, just the opposite to what one would expect.

Any ideas as to what might be going wrong?

[sweh]

If this was the techmoan youtube channel then it'd be because of a loose drive belt; it doesn't grip well enough to spin the motor with the extra weight/load of the disk!