Optical Drive kicks in while working on MBP???

Lately while I am working on my computer the optical drive starts up like I just inserted a disk but did not. Any reason why this would happen? It doesn't cause any problems (so far) but I wonder if anyone else has noticed this happen with their MB? I am just hoping that something is not going south with my system or that there is not some sort of virus/malware installed on my system which causes this. I know that is a stretch and seems foolish but it just seems odd. I just wonder if there is a worm or something running through my entire system checking for any information on all drives???

JKStraw wrote:
Lately while I am working on my computer the optical drive starts up like I just inserted a disk but did not. Any reason why this would happen? It doesn't cause any problems (so far) but I wonder if anyone else has noticed this happen with their MB? I am just hoping that something is not going south with my system or that there is not some sort of virus/malware installed on my system which causes this. I know that is a stretch and seems foolish but it just seems odd. I just wonder if there is a worm or something running through my entire system checking for any information on all drives???
It won't be malware. There are several other threads on this same issue elsewhere in the forums and thus far I have yet to see a solution. I'm experiencing the same thing (unibody MBP 2.4; Apple's already replaced the machine once for doing that and I'm going to the Apple store tomorrow again as the replacement is exhibiting that too) and I thought I'd found a solution but alas it failed in the end.
On my machine the phantom eject noise is made after a DiskManagementTool process kicks in (the process' parent PID was that of diskutil, and the process ends as soon as the drive makes noise) but I've yet to figure out what triggers diskutil or DiskManagementTool or how to stop it happening.

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You can get a fairly cheap external CD/DVD burner/player at Newegg.com http://www.newegg.com/External-CD-DVD-Blu-Ray-Drives/SubCategory/ID-420?Order=PR ICE

Optical drive on iMac at work, barely one year old, won't read CD's....disc utilities shows disc unavailable! Rarely used and out of warranty, what a rip off!! I have been on MACS since the 80's and things are getting more and more difficult

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Optical drive and HD not working together in 1.67GHZ 15" G4

I have G4 Al 1.67GHz Powerbook that I am unable to make the Optical drive be recognized when the internal HD is connected. If I put the HD in an ext Firewire enclosure and boot from that, the optical drive works fine. I have tried two Motherboards, different flex cables on both drives, different HD and Optical but no change. I did have to load the HD in a 1Ghz 12inch G4 PB since I do not have a newer OS version than 10.4 and I have seen that the 1.67GHz requires 10.4.2. However, I loaded the drive and upgraded it to 10.4.10 before installing it in the 1.67Ghz. It seems to act like a IDE master/slave conflict. I also found an older optical drive that allows you to set the drive as a Master, slave or for cable select. When I set it to slave, it work just fine. the problem is I would like to use the PB with the original UJ-846 Superdrive it came with.
Is it possible that this is a problem with the software load?
Any help would be much appreciated.
Doug

Hello.
I have a similar problem on my al powerbook G4 as well. I have a UJ 845e superdrive. It was working just fine, but since I installed Leopard (10.5.1) it stoped working. if i insert a cd or a dvd, it will spin it for a while before rejecting it.
Can you help me with that ???

Upgrading to 10.6 with half working optical drive from a 2nd working mac

my optical drive only reads audio cds on my:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP41.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.27f3
Serial Number (system): W88084XHYJX
Hardware UUID: 8693FC2B-591C-50BC-974B-B178B7787BCC
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled
I'd like to know, short of replacing the optical drive, whats is the best way to upgrade to snow leopard 10.6 since it won't read the dvd instal disc. I have access to a buddy's 2009 mac book with a working optical drive. In the instructions of the 10.6 manual it says this can be done but the machines have to be on the same network in which case how do i do that or can this be done in an easier way, without incurring aditional cost? thank you for any help

Take your disc over to your friend's house. Meanwhile get yourself an 8 GB USB flash drive. Clone the DVD to the flash drive:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4.Check the box labeled Erase destination.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Take the flash drive to your computer and boot it with the flash drive:
Booting From a USB Flash Drive
1. Insert the flash drive in a USB port.
2. Restart the computer.
3. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the "OPTION" button.
4. Select the flash drive's icon from the display in the startup manager.
5. Click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Destination means the USB flash drive.
Source means the installer disc.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Optical Drives Not Found/Not Working

Hello everyone,
I'm having trouble getting my optical drives working. They are both the same make and model, and they both have power (open and close) but they aren't recognized by the system. I installed Arch a couple of weeks ago, after the init scripts/systemd change, so nothing was broken there (I'm not sure if that would even have anything to do with it.
I've done some research to see if I could find any drivers/firmware, but all of things I've found are only for Windows. The optical drives do work in Windows. I have added myself to the 'optical' group, and dmesg | grep CD gives:
[ 0.630535] ata5.00: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS04, max UDMA/33
[ 0.630560] ata5.01: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS08, max UDMA/33
I also recall reading here that perhaps they aren't being picked up by the kernel, but I am very unclear on how to check to see what the kernel is picking up. I'm also not sure if they have ever worked under Arch and then stopped, or whether they never worked at all. I just found out earlier today when I went to burn a CD and xfburn gave a message saying that there were no burners found.
The /dev directory has no cdrom* or sr* listings at all. lshw also shows nothing about the optical drives. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

I unplugged one of the drives, but it still did not show up in /dev. I checked the systemd log and it shows the folllowing:
[dochollidae@ArchLinux ~]$ sudo journalctl | grep DVD
Dec 02 03:40:58 ArchLinux kernel: ata5.01: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS08, max UDMA/33
Dec 02 08:10:08 ArchLinux kernel: ata5.00: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS04, max UDMA/33
Dec 02 08:10:08 ArchLinux kernel: ata5.01: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS08, max UDMA/33
Dec 03 04:32:35 ArchLinux kernel: ata5.00: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS04, max UDMA/33
Dec 03 04:32:35 ArchLinux kernel: ata5.01: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS08, max UDMA/33
Dec 03 13:25:44 ArchLinux kernel: ata3.01: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS08, max UDMA/33
Dec 03 13:59:04 ArchLinux kernel: ata1.01: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS08, max UDMA/33
Dec 03 14:11:33 ArchLinux kernel: ata5.01: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS08, max UDMA/33
Dec 04 02:31:28 ArchLinux kernel: ata5.01: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS08, max UDMA/33
Dec 04 11:52:41 ArchLinux kernel: ata5.01: ATAPI: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S162L, TS08, max UDMA/33
The one labeled "TS04" isn't there anymore, but the one that is doesn't show up in devices.
I looked into writing udev rules, and I came across this thread and created a file /etc/udev/rules.d/82-cdrom.rules:
SUBSYSTEM=="block", KERNEL=="sr0", SYMLINK+="cdrom cdrw dvd dvdrw", ENV{GENERATED}=1
# permissions for IDE CD devices
SUBSYSTEMS=="ide", KERNEL=="hd[a-z]", ATTR{removable}=="1", ATTRS{media}=="cdrom*", GROUP="optical"
# permissions for SCSI CD devices
SUBSYSTEMS=="scsi", KERNEL=="s[rg][0-9]*", ATTRS{type}=="5", GROUP="optical"
That didn't do the trick, but being that I have never dealt with writing udev rules before, I'm not sure if I'm going about it the right way.

External hard drive not suddenly not working on MBP

Last year I bought a WD My Passport for Mac, and it's been working fine ever since I got it. However, today my MBP (Mountian Lion 10.8.5) did not recognize it. It does not show up in the system profiler nor in disk utility. I did notice in disk utility that there was a decryptedfile.dmg mounted, but I'm not sure if it's related to the problem. I tried connecting it to another Macbook, but it still shows the same problem. The light on the Passport is on, though it doesn't blink like it usually does. Someone halp!

That is a puzzle. If you have the boxes checked, then the drive should appear on the desktop. Likewise if you have the proper boxes checked, the HDD should appear in the side bar:
If not, the only suggestion that I can offer is a reinstall of the OSX.

(TP A21m) Optical drives (CDRom, etc.) only work in safe mode after installing IBM RecordNow

Two days ago, I put in a new IBM CD-RW/DVD Combo IV drive into the Ultrabay 2000 slot of my TP A21m 2628, and using the accompanying IBM software CD, installed the IBM RecordNow program. After the re-boot, the operating system (Windows 2000 SP4) failed to recognize any of my internal or external optical drives. They all stopped working in normal mode. What happened? What is suddenly blocking all of my optical drives?
They all work perfectly fine in safe mode; my internal optical drives work perfectly when being tested by PC Doctor; they show up in the "Safely Remove Hardware" list; and Device Manager indicates that the drivers are installed, enabled and working properly. (However, there is no "+" next to CD drive in the boot sequence of the BIOS Setup Utility). The BIOS is the latest version, IBM/Lenovo drivers and software have been kept pretty much up-to-date, and the operating system was always kept up-to-date. I have run system file checker and so on.
I uninstalled the IBM RecordNow, removed the Combo drive and re-inserted the original CD-Rom drive, but that made no difference. So, with the Combo drive back in place and (using means other than the CD-drive) I reinstalled the original IBM RecordNow and proceeded to install the update from Lenovo (specified for my Combo drive and Windows 2000) in the hopes that the update would fix the bug. But, the update wouldn't install and no explanation was provided.
I am quite sure that it is not a hardware problem, particularly since everything is fine in safe mode and under PC Doctor. At a minimum, I would like to get my computer back to the way it was before I put in the Combo drive two days ago - with a working internal CD-Rom drive and a working external CD-RW drive. Right now I am without any optical drive functionality, like I was way back in mid-1990's. Thank you for your help.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

The problem has been fixed as follows: I modified the registry in accordance with the Microsoft instructions at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270008/ : "... Remove the Upperfilters and Lowerfilters values completely from the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}…"
After the reboot, the operating system once again recognized the optical drive. Having modified the registry, I then had to reinstall ITunes. After that, I successfully reinstalled the software from the IBM Software CD. Everything seems to be fine now.
(The update for the IBM RecordNow still refused to install, but I probably don't need it anyway. I have not bothered to check whether the external optical drive works or not, and I don't see any need to do so at this time.) Thank you

DVD physically stuck in optical drive

My grandson apparently tried to insert his game DVD by himself. I can see/feel the edge of the disc in the optical drive. The disc isn't being recognized by Disk Utility, and none of the usual tricks (eject while holding upside down, restart while holding buttons down, etc.) are working.
The optical drive appears to be working correctly -- it tries to eject the DVD with the usual methods. Is there a way to physically eject the DVD such as the old methods of using a paper clip to release the mechanism? Evidently it isn't physically seated properly.

+Well, I realize that I'm talking myself here but would really like to give Michael credit.+
Thanks for trying but it's been broken for a while and Apple have no ETA on a fix
http://discussions.apple.com/ann.jspa?annID=469
Some suspect it's (getting rid of points) an experiment to see if it alters who posts/how much ...

Using a Pinnacle Optical Drive PMO 650 with Mac OS 10.5.2 possible?

I have lots of backup files stored on Optical Discs. Is there anyway to get my Pinncale Optical Drive PMO 650 to work with Mac OS 10.5.2? I looked on Pinnacle site, and they suggested FWB's 'Hard Disk Toolkit', ANUBIS by CharisMac, or going on apple suppport. Has anyone used these? Do they work with OS 10.5.2?
Thanks for any feedback!

I use Macs in my environment, and they run great. My site uses 1131 and 1231's, with EAP-FAST authentication. I did have a couple of strange issues though with Leopard, which I will share below:
1) With 10.5, I would have to turn my radion off & on to get it to associate. Once I upgraded to 10.5.2, it worked great.
2) With 802.1X based authenticaiton, the setup is a bit counter intuitive. I had ot make sure that I was selecting user based credentials for non-domain Macs. I would then delete the entry in my wireless sites that the 802.1X would enter, and recreate it to set the proper encryption scheme.
Hope that helps =)

Please help me find an effective solution for an external optical drive for my Mid 2012 Macbook Pro.

I have replaced my optical drive with a DataDoubler and they both work fine but the new external optical drive enclosure doesn't work with the optical drive I took out of my Mid 2012 Macbook Pro... Well it does work and recognises my optical drive perfectly, it runs fine but it can't handle some disk installations.
I have heard that the apple external superdrive isn't reliable for playing DVD's or lasting either.
Can I have someone with experience with external optical drives to give me professional advice or just other people with solutions.
Below is an image of what I have now for an enclosure.

Vespita wrote:
Okay, wise guy. I don't use Google, but my Startpage seach yielded this.
Now wasn't that easier than asking us to look for the item for you?
Let me fix your link for you.
"Okay, wise guy. I don't use Google, but my Startpage seach yielded this"

How can I fix my optical drive?

In mid-September my sister asked me to free up some space on her computer harddrive (hers is a 2009 MacBook, white plastic unibody or whatever). Her drive was so full that she couldn't download the smallest of drive apps. I told her to just delete some junk but she refused, stubborn girl. So I removed my computers optical drive (I have a 2010 MacBook Pro with aluminum unibody), and replaced it temporarily with the OWC data doubler. At first I couldn't do the replacement because there was a screw I couldn't remove because the head of the screw was broken, so I put my OWC SSD in my sister's computer and her HDD in her optical drive slot. It worked. But now my optical drive is not working. It has power, the discs insert and revolve normally, but my computer doesn't get any of the information. iTunes can't 'see' the CD's and DVD Player can't 'see' the DVD's. And I can rarely eject the discs. I only ever tried one CD and one DVD in the drive and both spent over a week to eject. When they ejected, the computer had just booted up and said "You have inserted an incompatible disk" or something like that, I don't really remember. I did try removing all the data from my SSD and booted it up as completely new, but got the same thing.
HELP!
BTW when I inserted the DVD and opened DVD Player, it showed an error code -70012 (A valid DVD drive could not be found)

The Superdrive is tied to a copy protection scheme for playing DVD movies, I suspect when you placed it in the other machine it messed this up.
Have no idea how to fix it and you should have consulted before doing such a drastic act.
It's dumb moves like this that Apple is now sealing up all their computers so us pro's and power users can't service it themselves.
Firewire Target Disk Mode could have been used to free up space on the non-booting hard drive, or installing OS X on a external drive.
Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive

Frozen Load Screen and Bad Optical Drive

Last week I was using the Internet to check email. It was very slow and eventually froze up (couldn't force quit or anything). I had to shut down the computer by pressing the power button. I waited a few minutes and turned it back on. Since then I get stuck at the loading screen. It just displays the apple logo, the spinning gear, and also what looks like a scroll bar underneath that.
I have read through some other threads to give me ideas to try such as resetting the RAM and SMC, disk repair, etc. To make matters worse, my optical drive hasn't been working since December. (Basically I stick a disk in about halfway and then it makes a weird noise and spits it back out.) I've been using an external optical drive to fix that problem.
#1. Can I use an external optical drive to boot from an OS X disk?
#2. Is there anything else I can try (aside from what I mentioned above) as far as getting the computer past the frozen load screen?
Thank you for your help!

Hi, heres a link that might help..
http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-system-mac-software/296102-updating-leopard-ex ternal-optical-drive.html
Your issue could be a failing HD....L

No optical drives recognized

I have a souped up G4 MMD: 2 gigs RAM, two video cards, three internal hard drives, an internal combo drive and a superdrive under 10.4.8. Unfortunately, the super drive and combo drive positions should be reversed but that may be a different issue.
Recently, I connected a Canopus 110 (used to capture analog signals from a VCR and convert to digital signals on a hard drive) to the end of a firewire train of an external DVD burner and 5 large capacity external HDs. Upon the next restart, both optical drives were unrecognized. I disconnected the Canopus and the entire external train of firewire devices and restarted and all was well BUT DVDs and CDs would no longer mount. (That had been a problem with the superdrive for a long time but I had chalked that up to it being installed in the slave rather than master position - see paragraph 1 above). So, I had the recognized drives but no ability to mount the media.
Time being an issue, I did not try to troubleshoot the mounting media problem immediately but instead imported some more analog data using the Canopus. Trying to learn from experience, I disconnected the firewire chain before restarting, confident that at least I would have recognized optical drives and I could work on solving the media mounting issue. This is necessary whether or not you are reading from a DVD or CD just to be able to run things like DVD player. It is also annoying to know that things like DVD player will not acknowledge an external optical device if it cannot find an internal one first. Anyway, wrong. The Mac no longer sees that the two internal optical drives are even present.
I really, really need some ideas.
I haven't installed any new applications lately. I have followed suggestions to create another administrative user and have twice applied the 10.4.8 combo update. I tried accessing the G4 through target mode using a laptop running 10.3.9 but I only see one of the internal drives and it is not the startup. I can't use anything like Disk Warrior Drive Genius for obvious reasons. The open and shut keyboard commands don't work and there is a data disk in the combo drive right now.
Do you suppose it could be hardware? Did either one of the drives fail and that is causing the other to fail too?
Thanks everyone.
G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Here's what happened to restore the recognition of the 2 optical drives - they still won't read or mount anything but they no longer prevent the running of DVD player or other Apple stuff.
I tried to restart in OS 9 but it got hung up at the starting screen with a smiley mac. I restarted using the option key that allowed me to select another operating system, in this case one on an other than startup drive but with OS 10.4.3. Upon startup, those drives were recognized.
I changed the startup back to 10.4.8 and restarted. Both optical drives were recognized by the system. That's it. That's all that was done, I still don't have an answer to why neither will read media but that's another question.
Even though no one posted a suggestion, I appreciate those that at least waded through all of the text. Thanks to all.

Why my MBP optical drive left to work after upgrade lyon ?

why my MBP optical drive left to work after upgrade lyon ?
somethinh about firme ware ?
i need a solucion and a explanation
becouse before the upgrade works perfect ?
somebody have´s the same problem !
i wiil go to the deep whit that , i dont like gifth my money to people selling bad products!!

haha! my native language?
if you only speak English I guess, but hey that part of the superdrive stopped working on my MacBookPro, when I did the upgradre to Lyon? so they understand or not?
thanks.

Optical Drive kicks in while working on MBP???

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