Timski, I see your last post was 27/01. Have you still got problems or have you succumbed to the horror of technical services? (they will rip you off through trial and error). Your drive making a horrible noise does not bode well that that can be down to the type of media you are using. Could you please tell me:

1. What CDR are you using (200 of them?). ie. CD-RW or CD-R, type (eg. Sony, JVC, Ritek etc) and capacity (650 or 700Mb). Mac drives are very fussy if you use really cheap and nasty disks that are really only good for PC's (that's not a dig at PC's).

2. What software you have used to try and burn your files (i-tunes. toast etc.).

3. What type of files (data, audio (mp3? aac? aif?)).

4. Your drive type (click the apple symbol on you finer menu bar, select 'about this mac' / more info / hardware / ATA) - this will give the model.

Test: Have you tried to play an original audio cd in your drive? One that you bought in a shop? If this plays ok (without horrible noises) then we know that playback is not an issue. Have you tried to burn an audio track (just the 1 track - and yes it will waste a disk if it is CDR - but you've got 200!) to a disk (use i-tunes for this - it's less complicated). If this works then general burning is not a problem ie. it's not your disk burner / reader. So you wouldn't have to buy a new one. From this point we can try further tests and possibly diagnose the issue.