How do I disable my disc drive?

I have an older Macbook pro with OS X on it. My dvd or disc drive refuses to accept discs anymore. I'll put in a dvd and it will make very loud noises and then spit it out. It's done it for years but its gotten so bad it won't accept the disc at all. I have an external drive, but it won't work because my computer has one. Is there anyway to disable the internal one in my computer?

Often the problem lies with a dirty lens. Use a lens cleaning DVD, a shot of compressed air or a fine microfiber clothe wrapped around a business card slid gently inside.
Here is the Apple support article on the subject of optical drives:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2801
If no success, try the Apple store genius bar for assistance.
ciao.

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How can I disable my dvd drive?

DVD is physically stuck and I want to diable the dvd writer

Have you tried going to System Preferences CD&DVD and setting all the actions to Ignore?
There are reported ways to disable the DVD drive by removing the kext file(s) that deal with the DVD. I cannot vouch for any of these as I have not tried them myself
How to Disable the Superdrive on a MacBook Pro | eHow is the easiest, moves one file.
I the above simple solution doesn;t work there is this
How to disable an optical drive - Mac OS X Hints
there re other. Proceed carefully and make a backup of the system before doing these.
regards

Disable Automatic Disc Drive Startup

Hello,
I have recently been watching a lot of TV DVDs on my MacBook Pro. However, when not watching, I find it very annoying (not to mention wasteful to the drive) that the disc drive automatically tries to boot up everytime I open my computer.
Is there anyway to leave a disc in the drive and only have it turn on when I ask it to in the DVD player?
Thanks!

fizzbin1701,
if there’s a disc in the Superdrive, then it will always “rev” when you open your computer. The System Preferences change only prevents the disc from being played automatically.

How to create a virtual disc drive?

I need to get my computer to treat an ISO image as if it's a physical optical drive. I've tried mounting it via loop devices, which is very useful, but it's not enough (basically, I need programs to be able to find it as a device, not a mounted filesystem). Any ideas?
Last edited by fflarex (2009-01-12 20:32:28)

You could create an empty file with dd like this:
dd if=/dev/zero of=disk-image count=40960
That will create a 20 MB file
Then you can format it with a file system:
/sbin/mkfs -t ext3 -q disk-image
Tell it to proceed even if it is not a block specific device.
Mount it and you have a virtual disc drive.
mount -o loop disk-image fs
I borrowed this from here:
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/1387/
Last edited by Cheesebaron (2009-01-12 20:36:18)

How to install Leopard when disc drive is broken

Because the inbuilt CD/DVD drive has broken I use an external disk drive via USB (a LaCie d2). The Leopard install disc reads perfectly well from the LaCie drive (as you would expect) but when (at the very beginning of the install process) it prompts a Restart, the system simply restarts using the old OSX software instead of booting up from the Leopard install disc in the external LaCie drive. I guess this is because it only looks on the hard drive and the in built (now broken) CD/DVD drive. Does anyone know the best way of getting the install to work?
Thanks John

You can obtain an external hard drive with a Firewire port & clone the Leopard installer disc or restore an image of it to that drive. (Simply copying files won't work because that will not create a bootable disk.) You cannot copy
For more info on creating disk images & restoring them to other disks, see the Leopard help topic on your Mac, "*Restoring a disk or disk image to another disk*" & the topics it links to, like "*Restoring a disk image to a disk*." For more info on cloning, check out products like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!.
You cannot use your existing internal hard drive as a substitute for an external one unless you can partition it so that the clone or restored image is on a separate partition from the normal one you wish to install Leopard on (the installer cannot install the OS to the partition it is running from). While it is possible to do "live" partitioning to a drive that already contains files, it is advisable to back up the existing partition to other media first because there is always a chance that something will go wrong in the partitioning process, leaving you without those files. Since you need an external drive to best do this anyway, I don't recommend this approach.
However, since you really should have an external drive for backups whether or not you are installing the new OS, you can combine this with the installer disc clone/restored image as follows:
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2. Before putting the drive into service, use Disk Utility to partition it into two or more volumes. One of them just needs to be a bit bigger than the total capacity of the installer disc, say 10 GB. Make this the last volume of the drive & you can delete it later if you wish but you probably will want to keep it around for future installs.
3. Use the above method to create the bootable version of the installer disc on this partition, restart from it using the option key method to invoke the Startup Manager, & install the new OS on the internal drive from it.
As a side benefit, since disk drives are much faster than DVD's, the startup & installation process will be faster than from the DVD.

Qosmio G50-10J: How to replace the Optical Disc Drive (ODD)?

Hello there,
the optical drive of my Qosmio G 50 is not working properly anymore, it reads only some movie-DVDs, but sadly no videogameDVDs at all, so I cannot instal any games.
The warranty has already expired too. So I wanted to ask if it is possible to change the drive myself, if it is then how should I do it, and if by doing it would the laptop be in
serious risk of getting damaged?
I would be very thankful for every tip and every help you guys can give me!!!
Best regards,
a.z.

Hi
In different cases the ODD replacement is not very tricky.
If you want you can check this forum category.
Here you can find some videos how to replace the ODD on different notebook models:
http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=115
Here is also a nice Youtube channel which provides the instructions how to replace the ODD:
http://www.youtube.com/user/toshibaeuropesupport
But maybe the ODD laser lens is dirty. In my case I could solve similar issue cleaning the laser lens using a cotton-wool tip and alcohol.
But be careful doing this!

How to back up external disc drive iPhoto library

How to back up iPhoto library that is stored on an external disk drive

Drag-copy it to a different external drive formatted as Mac OS Extended, or use Time Machine, choosing to remove that drive from the list of items excluded from the backup, or use a program such as the Disk Utility, Carbon Copy Cloner, or SuperDuper to clone the drive containing it.
(111981)

How do I use a disc drive?

Is there a disc drice in the IMac or can you purchase a add on?

iMac doesn't come with a built in super drive.
You can buy external drives like Apple SuperDrive or other third party drives.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD564ZM/A/apple-usb-superdrive
Best.

After installing yosemite my disc drive says it is not supported, how do I get it supported

I installed Yosemite. I tried to copy photos onto a CD. I get an error message saying
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How do I get my disc drive to work again?

In that case the procedure assuming it is a PAYG phone is to get an o2 PAYG sim, put £20 on it and then make a few calls making sure you leave £15 on the sim to pay for the unlock. Then there is an online unlock request form on the o2 site just fill this in. It takes between 1-14 days and you get a message from o2 telling you how to complete the official unlock through iTunes.
I got my o2 unlock in nov 09 so this is not just opinion.

Imac Intel hard disc and disc drive change (in french)

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http://macboostfr.free.fr/

You are saying that your hard drive in Disk Utility shows 150 GB, and when you click Info that also shows 150GB? This would be the hardware drive details, indicated by the name of a drive manufacturer like Hitachi or Seagate? Plus when you select that and click Info, the pop up shows the same capacity (followed by the actual number of bytes)?
Offset under the hardware drive in the initial Disk Utility list will be any partitions that you have mounted. If selected, they will show the name under which they are mounted on the Mac. That should give a complete list (bottom of page) of the mount point, drive size, number of bytes used, and number of bytes free. What do they say?

Information about the disc drive

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   Re-index Macintosh HD.
   Do this twice. This will take a while. wait until it is finished.
   System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
   http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

Solid State Disc Drive ?

Does anyone know how much the Solid State Disc Drive weighs?
I'm trying to figure out the total weight of the Portege R600 with the battery and the disc drive.
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Thank you for using the Toshiba Laptop Forums. Since there have been no posts to this thread in several days, it is being marked "read only" as part of our routine message board maintenance.
If you still need assistance, please feel free to post a new message or contact the Toshiba Customer Support Center at 1-800-457-7777.
Trina W
Moderator

I have mac OSX 10.5.8 and I need to upgrade ti icloud....My disc drive is broken so any upgrades or updates need to be done online..what do I need to do to achieve this?

I am running mac OSX 10.5.8 and need to upgrade to icloud.....I know I need to purchase a later operating system but what do I need to do and how??
Also my disc drive is broken and any upgrades/updates will need to be done online....

Lion:
We need more info about your Mac to see if it will even be capable,
So we know more about it...
At the Apple Icon at top left>About this Mac, report OSX version, then click on More Info, then click on Hardware> and report this upto but not including the Serial#...
version 10.7.3
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 6 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM71.007A.B03
SMC Version (system): 1.21f4
You'll need to buy SL/10.6 first & get it to 10.6.8, then get Lion... if you can run it. But then you'd need another Mac with a good Disc Drive & Firewire on both.
Or if you can erase your disk...
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD256

How to disable "Power optical drive" icon?

Hi everyone,
does anyone know how to disabling on the taskbar the "optical drive power" icon or how to deactivating at all the service? I cannot find it in Services, msconfig, not even in 3rd parties registry editors like Cc Cleaner or Jv16 PowerTools...
Thanks a lot,
Walter

Ive tried several options but was not able to remove this symbol from the task bar.
I dont know if this is the right one but when you open services there you will find option Toshiba optical disc drive service.
Anyway, dont change anything. It runs in the background and doesnt disturb on any way, right?

How do I disable my disc drive?

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