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external DVD drive on iMac

ilford101

ilford101

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 23, 2017
4
0
Montreal
Hi all,

I have a late 2009 27" iMac running Sierra 10.12.6. There is a CD stuck in the Superdrive that won't come out and as an alternative I hooked up a USB LaCie DVD drive. It will recognise an audio CD and show the icon on the screen but when I put in a DVD or a photo CD nothing happens. No disc icon on the screen, nothing. I'm guessing that it's a software issue rather than a problem with the drive since audio CDs work fine. Has anybody seen this before? Thanks.
 
Not sure it's a software problem. Since the built in optical drive has a CD stuck in it that's probably still being "seen", that may impact what the external drive is capable of. Have you tried removing the stuck CD? A google search should come up with various methods of ejecting the stuck drive without having to take your iMac apart. There are also YouTube videos available which show how to remove the stuck CD.
 
I've tried everything to remove the CD; Google, Youtube and even chatted with an Apple tech and short of opening up the Mac it won't come out. The reason I suspect that it's software related is that the stuck CD is an audio CD and the only thing that works in the external drive are audio CDs.
 
ilford101 said:
Hi all,

I have a late 2009 27" iMac running Sierra 10.12.6. There is a CD stuck in the Superdrive that won't come out and as an alternative I hooked up a USB LaCie DVD drive. It will recognise an audio CD and show the icon on the screen but when I put in a DVD or a photo CD nothing happens. No disc icon on the screen, nothing. I'm guessing that it's a software issue rather than a problem with the drive since audio CDs work fine. Has anybody seen this before? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Trying booting into safe mode, shutdown the Mac, then hold the shift key while booting.
 
Hi jerwin, the Lacie drive is the FA Porsche Design USB drive, a NEC ND-2500A drive. To Loekf, I did try all the suggestions in the link you gave me and Taz Mangus, I tried that too, to no avail.
 
Maybe I'm mistaken but that is a Lacie enclosure with a NEC drive correct? If so, I wouldn't be surprised if you are running into software issue. Easiest thing would be to check it with a Windows/Linux machine. I think there is quite a bit going on there with relatively out of date hardware if I'm not mistaken. Maybe try to find the latest firmwares for both and hope you can update via a Mac.

However, you may want to just get an entire new external drive (all in one). Easily less than 40-50 dollars for a CD/DVD reader/writer and less than 110 for a CD/DVD/BD reader/writer. I have Samsung SE-506CB that works great. Only thing I would look for is to make sure there is Mac software available for updating the firmware if you don't have access to a Windows machine.
 
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