my DVD cdrom disappeared

I just got hardy heron.Its great!  I love it.except, I popped a DVD into my cdrom, and it would not mount.Then it would not eject manually.Then it told me I could not eject drive, because there was 'probably nothing there'So I have been downloading packets for a while.  getting all my DVD, NTFS permiisssions.Tried to mount from terminal.  My drive does not exist.maybe the cdrom is burned out . . . Could anybody help?