The four failures, decoded
A hum with no spin is a jam — often freeable with the hex key that shipped with the unit, power off first, hands never inside. Silence plus a dead reset button usually means the motor has retired; on a unit past seven or eight years that's a replacement conversation, because disposal motors and their bearings age as a set. Leaking from the bottom housing is the unambiguous one: the internal seal is gone and no repair reaches it — replace. Leaking at the top or side connections, by contrast, is often just gaskets and mounting rings, a genuine repair on a unit of any age. Knowing which failure you have before calling saves a diagnostic step; describing the symptom precisely does the same.
The septic paragraph, because in this county it applies to most of the map: a disposal and a septic tank can coexist, but the disposal's contribution settles into the sludge layer the pump-out truck measures. Households on septic that lean hard on a disposal simply buy pump-outs more often. Composting the peelings costs less than pumping them, and your drainfield will never send a thank-you note either way.