Defunct cd drive

Question

My gateway notebook will no longer recognize cds! Everytime I put a cd in the drive it will whirl like its about to play and then send the message "there is no disc in the drive". Any suggestions that are ideally suuuuuuper easy? : - ). This problem began after installing a hard drive. The hard drive worked fine, and then was also no longer recognized by my computer and to make it work, I have to manually check songs in order to put them in my ipod. Could the two problems be related? I would so appreciate your help.

Your friendly computer idiot.