Motor is broken. Rather than opening it and then giving up and buying a new one your friend should have had Sony replace it or he should have taken it to the store he got it at, then he wouldn't have wasted money. You could try buying a new motor and replacing it but it would be much easier to replace the drive itself altogether. You should find one on eBay.

you will have to transfer the circuit board. the wires on that sensor arint broken or bent to much or something in the way blocking it? also if u have a multi meter check to see if the motor gets electricity at any time and if it does and dosent turn over then it would be the motor. if you dont have one u can bring the ps3 into a electronic repair shop and ask them to jus test the motor. prolly wont cost more then 10 bucks.

Mick, another thing i forgot to mention is that it seems when my friend opened up the system to try and fix it, he broke the click on the motherboard that holds the ribbon cable in that comes from the drive. I read somewhere that, that cable also has power and a bunch of other stuff that go to and from the drive. Could that maybe be the reason that the drive doesnt do anything? I put the cable in and piece of electrical tape to try and hold it in, but that click pushes down on the cable to make it contact, right?

Yes the PS3 wasn't working before my friend took it apart. I don't remember what he said the problem was, but he took it apart and when I took it apart to check everything out I noticed that the clip that holds the ribbon cable to the motherboard was broken. When I got the play station from him, it was not accepting any discs. I took the drive a part because I wanted to make sure that it was aligned properly thinking that might be why it was not taking the disc. In order to re-align the drive you have to use a disc, which is why there is one in there now. So the disc is not stuck in there because I forced it, it is in the drive correctly and the 2 pieces in the front of the drive are up preventing another disc from being put in. There is no noise from the drive when I turn the system on and the blue light does not come on at all.

So you have it fixed and working now?

Seems like the sensor and the motor then as you should hear that motor very faintly when you switch on. The warranty void seal on the bottom (left side when horizontal), you still have that? In the UK you'd get away with a replacement as they do a doorstep swap but in North America I'm pretty sure you send it off to Sony. Your best bet if you have the sticker is make it look as best as you can. If you don't then I'd say take your chances anyway.

lol over here Sony would just see the missing sticker but just repair it anyway. Luckily I got me an additional 12 months on my warranty because they messed up! Best bet is eBay. See if you can get a used PS3 as spares as that would be cheaper than a new drive alone. Or go for the drive alone used and the board with it.

if your friends problems before he took it apart and broke the connection where the same as now then the connection is prolly not the problem but if the ps3 acknowledged anything about the the disk before he took it apart then its most likely that connection. also one thing i forgot to ask b4, did he ever have the swap switch installed? if so that has been know to burn out the drives.

I have another quick question. If I were to buy a 40g motherboard and disc controller, would that work in the 60g case with the 4 usb ports? Obviously it wouldn't be backwards compatible, but still.

Cool, thanks for the info. I still think I am just going to pay the $150 to Sony and get a replacement if I can't find a working motherboard and drive controller for a 60Gb. The same would go if I put an 80gb as well, except everything from that should work, cuz they are more or less the same, right?

Cool. Sounds good. I have found a few broken ones online, where the people say they don't get a red light when they flick the switch in the back or its missing the hdd or something. So I might just buy one of those for cheap and try to fix it myself