I have so many computing devices that I can’t always keep them straight when they have problems. Some times I just live with the problem when I can work around it. Other times I find a solution. Earlier this month I had a weird one happen where the two DVD drives on my main office computer disappeared in the Linux desktop.
All the details escape me but I remember the drives didn’t show in a terminal window or the Drives program either. Mechanically they were fine as they would open and close the drawers. And with both disappearing simultaneously it points to software and not hardware. I think I tested them with a Linux boot DVD and they worked fine and I knew then it was something with the Linux OS.
The problem turned out to be disk space on the drive holding the Linux operating system. There must not been enough room to create system files for mounting the two DVD drives or something like this. Once I got more space available, the drives were fine.
It just goes to show that anything can happen when hard drive space gets low – even in Linux!.
Linux Mint Operating System