DVD Drive Dissapeared from My Computer

[chamois]

My PC has two lightscribe DVD Reader/writers installed. They've always shown up as Drives F and E respectively in My computer.
This afternoon I placed a new, pristine Sony CD-R in the E drive and tried to burn a file to the disc via disc-at-once in Nero (the method I've used dozens of times before). The Nero progress bar moved up to about 11% to show it was burning,but curiously the green LED on the drive remained unlit. The burning proceeded no further than the 11% and I waited around 15 minutes before cancelling the job on the Nero interface.
To my horror, I found that I could not eject the disc from the drive. The drawer failed to open and the LED remained unlit. I failed to get the disc out by poking a straightened paper-clip into the drive hole too. The drive was effectively dead. When I went to look at the drive in "My Computer", I found that the drive was missing. It's also missing in Device Manager and the burning options list in Nero. I tried installing and reinstalling Nero to no effect.
The event viewer states that the drive "disappeared from the system without first being prepared for removal".
Could anyone help me with this please? I'm using Vista Home Premium.

Thanks.

[chamois]

If it's of any significance, the drive is missing in the BIOS too.

[Brooksy]

Before doing anything else, with PC off but still plugged into wall socket (so you can earth yourself on a screw to get rid of static) open case & pull out then replace the white power plug lead into the drive. It has a red, yellow & black wires. Check that one of the wires tiny plugs hasn`t come out of the power lead. Also jiggle & push firmly in, the long thin black connecter (wide grey cable). Let us know if that doesn`t work. The paper clip trick suggests no power.