Broken Disk Drives still not resolved a year+ after launch?

Xbox Series X has been plagued with Disk Drive problems from what I've gathered online - I was excited to get the Halo Infinite Edition Xbox Series X - worked fine for a few months, then the problems started to occur once I started to use more disks. Loud loading sounds - crackling - loud beeps - taking forever to load the disk - or not loading it at all. Finally Elden Ring comes out - and now the problems are worse - won't load the disk at all without doing a console restart - and even then, it sometimes requires me to do this numerous times before it recognizes the disk, when trying to start the game up - there is no disk icon on the game title - so when you do click the game, it says "Insert disk" when there already is one in it. Thought hey, maybe it's a faulty disk, so tried others, and same problem. Not loading, loud noises, or loading after several console restarts.

Went into hotfix mode - followed numerous prompts on Xbox Support - removed account from console - and added back - didn't work. Turned the console horizontally - didn't work - (which shouldn't have worked anyways - when the console is meant to be vertical). Then did a WAC reset - didn't work - then turned on Energy Saving mode - and did not work, finally said, "hey, let's try a factory reset", this however, also did not work. And by not work - I mean it temporarily fixed the issue for that one specific console reboot. But once the console was turned off for more then 5-10mins to fully shutdown - it went straight back to "insert disk prompt" and got a few new ones too. Like, "check to see if disk is damaged" after it tried to load it, and a weird one that made the wireless internet disconnect after I did a factory reset (meaning after signing back into the wireless, and then hard shutting down the Xbox, it prompted that there was no wireless connection - and then went searching for wifi and could no longer find it until I did a "network check" then it would reconnect). Then sometimes, the disk wouldn't even spit out when I tried the injection button - so again, another restart to get the disk out.

I figured after a year plus of post launch these disk drive issues would be fixed, especially so after the Red Ring of Death fiasco during the Xbox 360 generation where I personally went through 2 Xbox's because of it, but it appears Xbox decided even with the problems with the disk drives out the gate - it would be "too expensive" to replace the disk drives with a better quality drive since it was obviously a component you skipped out on putting enough money into since people are going "digital" for the most part due to Covid and no midnight (9pm) releases for games anymore.

So I'm assuming the drive needs to be serviced at this point? And if it does, I'm sure I will be getting a refurbished console - the real question is, if I do send it in, will I still get the special edition console back, or a "regular" Series X?

:)