Disc Drive no longer taking Discs

Is the disc at least recognized? Are CDs or Blu Rays recognized?

The disc function is not connected to the xbl core service. So it may be an issue with your disc drive. As there were lots of problems with drives not reading game discs properly, but reading movie or music discws, your console ma ybe in need of some service.

Meanwhile as workaround you may try holding the disc a second longer when the drive tries to take it and then release the disc.

My disc drive has also started taking considerably longer to read discs this month for some reason although mine takes around 30 seconds or so rather than minutes like OP, and even more worryingly it about 1/4 of the time when I put a disc in the drive will
make a grinding noise and refuse to attempt to load it at all!

Depending on how old your console is and the wear on the console, your console sometimes has a harder time reading discs. This is simply due to the disc drive's laser lens getting weaker and essentially causing the discs to not be read any longer.

I'm almost certain if you've tried the steps above like taking your hard drive out and trying to see if it loads, then it would mean that it's your disc drive that's causing the problem.

It appears that there is possibly something wrong with the disc drive in that Xbox console causing it to break down while playing and no be able to read the data from the discs any longer. So I would recommend trying the disc solution tool found here

support.xbox.com/.../disc-drive-solution

Yeah, That's A Point... If The Disc, Is Lighter... The Disc Will Take Longer, To Spin Down & Also Has A Tendency, To Vivrate A Bit More Too..

It All Depends, On The Specific Drive & Firmware Too..

http://www.360drives.com/list

To Have The Disc Recognised & Display The Game Title In Dashboard... The Disc, Will Have To Spin, For A Bit...