i have a mt888 which had the same problem just recently (now it stopped working since it forgot to unlock the drive after writing the TOC and i can't open it anymore) and i got so pissed off that i just let it run for some minutes doing those strange noises trying to read the TOC... eventually it began to work again. i don't know if i was just lucky but you might as well try it... i also switched MDs in between and let it chew on the other one for some minutes. it's not a solution really, but you can try.