5 Effective Ways to Fix PS4 Disk Drive Not Working

PS4 disk drive not working when you want to play games on PS4? This issue is easy to fix. This post will explain to you why your PS4 disc drive doesn’t work and walk you through five practical methods to solve the problem.

Posted by @Hedy December 17, 2024 Updated By @Hedy August 1, 2024

PlayStation 4 is favored by a lot of game fans for its excellent game experience. However, they are disturbed by PS4 disk drive not working sometimes. For example, when they insert a disc into PS4, it will be ejected, showing a PS4 disc drive reading error, or losing response.

What should you do if this happens to you? The specific steps depend on the specific problem. To troubleshoot this issue, you need identify the cause of the problem first.

Why won't my disc work PS4?

When PS4 disc drive doesn't work, it can either be a hardware or software malfunction such as the disc drive mechanism being broken or the firmware having a bug or being corrupted. Here we collect some common reasons for the appearance of a non-working disk drive on PS4.

◤Improper operation

If you put a disc that is not compatible with PS4 or you position it on the slot reversely, which cannot be recognized by PS4, it's certainly easy to meet PS4 disk drive not working.

◤ Game disc problem

If the disc you're going to play is dirty or damaged, PS4 may not be able to get the information from it. For example, when there are many spots, big cracks, or deep scratches, it means the disc is useless.

◤ System software glitch

Outdated system software or some unknown bugs in the software may be the culprit of the problem that the PS4 disc drive doesn't work.

◤ Bad hardware

If you have exposed your PS4 console to a humid or hot environment for a long time, it's easy to cause damaged hardware, affecting the normal function of the disk drive.

5 solutions to PS4 disk drive not working

After knowing why won't my disc work PS4, it's time to follow the methods below to fix the problem and take the disk drive back to the normal orbit.

Note: These solutions pertain to all versions of PS4, including the original PS4, the PS4 Slim, and the PS4 Pro.

Fix 1. Reboot your PS4

The same as on Windows computers, rebooting is one of the effective ways to resolve most problems. If the hard drive on your PS4 is not working, you can try having your PS4 restarted. Just shut down the PS4, disconnect all the cables from the console, and reconnect everything back after waiting for a while. Then, check if your PS4 can load games successfully.

Fix 2. Clean the game disc

As we mentioned before, a dirty or damaged disc drive makes it hard to extract the data on it. But many game players usually ignore checking the cleanness of the game disc before inserting it on PS4.

To clean up a disc drive, use a clean and soft cloth to rub down the dirty spots or dust from the surface. Make sure you do the cleaning gently and check for cracks carefully.

Fix 3. Pay attention to the error code

Sometimes, the PS4 disk drive not working shows up with an error code that may tell you some specific information about the problem. You’d better take note of the code and figure out what it means from the PS4 manual or Google search so that you can eliminate the error code safely and quickly.

Fix 4. Update your PS4 in Safe Mode

When the PS4 disc drive doesn't work, it's worth trying to update the outdated software of your console to make them compatible with your current PS4 version. Due to the safety consideration, you should perform the update in Safe Mode. Here are the steps:

Step 1. Press the power button to turn off your PS4.

Step 2. Once the console is completely off, press and hold the power button. Release it after hearing two beeps.

Step 3. Use a USB cable to connect the DualShock4 controller to your PS4 and press the PS button.

Step 4. In the Safe Mode window, select "Update System Software" to begin the updating.

Fix 5. Replace the disk drive with a new one

If none of the above solutions work, it may be the problem of the hardware itself. A failing hardware is most likely to cause the PS4 disk drive not working. In such a case, you can replace the old drive with a new one to get rid of the issue.

Are you worried about data loss during the replacement? Keep calm, the method we're going to introduce below won't require you to reinstall all games after changing. That is to clone the old hard drive to the new drive using a reliable disk cloning tool like AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

Its "Disk Clone" feature will help you transfer all games from one drive to another safely and quickly. After cloning, all games can work as usual on the old one.

Now, you can download the demo version of this powerful software and follow the steps below to have a try.

Free DownloadWin 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
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Step 1. Take out the original disk drive from the PS4 console. Then connect it and the new hard drive to a Windows computer via a USB cable. Make sure both of the two are recognized by your Windows operating system.

Step 2. Install and launch the AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click on “Clone”>”Clone Disk”.

Step 3. Choose the hard disk that you need to clone as the source disk and click "Next".

Step 4. Select another drive as the destination disk, and then click "Next".

Step 5. Then, you can check the source and destination disk in the next window or change to "Sector to Sector clone", and click the "Confirm" button to continue if there is no problem.

Here, you can also click the "Settings" button to adjust the partition size on the destination disk or tick "4k alignment" to improve the reading and writing speed of the SSD. 

Step 6. After returning to the main interface, check the pending operation and click "Apply" and "Proceed" to commit the operation.

Step 7. After cloning, install the new disk drive into your PS4 to replace the failing one. Then, you’ll find your PS4 disk drive can work normally.

Conclusion

Are you facing PS4 disk drive not working issue? Do you know why it occurs and how to fix it? On this page, you can find the detailed explanation to the questions. If your PS4 needs repairing, just follow the solution above to have a try.

By the way, if your PS4 storage is full, you can also use AOMEI Partition Assistant to clean your PS4 hard drive or resize its partition for better game performance.