Sometimes it happens that MacBook owners encounter a problem: a DVD or CD disk gets stuck in the laptop. Unlike personal computer users, MacBook owners cannot remove the disk in the usual way (in the case of a PC, you can insert a needle into a special hole in the drive, the mechanism will work and the drive will open), because slot-loading drives do not have physical buttons. So what should you do if your laptop has a stuck disk?
Removing a DVD or CD from a MacBook - step-by-step instructions for users
These methods will definitely help you get out a stuck disk. They are also suitable for those who simply do not know how to remove a disk from a laptop on MAC OS X:
- The first and most obvious way out of the situation is to transfer the disk icon from the desktop to the icon in the Dock. You can also select the “extract” option from the general menu.
- If your Apple laptop has an Eject button on the keyboard, then restart your MacBook while holding down the Alt key. When the CD and DVD selection screen appears, we need to press the Alt key and then immediately click on Eject.
- If you activated a virtual machine (for example, this is the VMFusion program), then make sure that the drive is disabled in the virtual machine. It happens that after this the disk appears inside the operating system.
- If the disc cannot be removed in the usual way, we recommend downloading the Toast Titanium application and finding the “remove disc” option there.
- Sometimes a simple “Eject” command directly in iTunes helps, even when the drive is not visible inside the Finder.
- Download any specialized utility, and then select the drive in the left panel and click the corresponding button to remove it.
- Some MacBooks have special holes that can help solve this problem with a simple paper clip or needle, just like on a Windows PC.
- Launch the Terminal and in the window that opens, enter the following words “drutil tray eject”. This command activates the drive. Accordingly, entering the command “drutil tray close” will close the drive.
- You can use a simple and proven method that solves almost all problems - reboot. Reboot your MacBook by holding Command + Option + O + F to activate the Open Firmware line. There, type “eject CD” without quotes and click on Return (reboot). After this, the computer should eject the disk itself. To start the operating system, type “mac-boot” into the same line again without quotes. Then click the Return button again. That's it, the laptop started to reboot (will not work if you are the owner of an Intel MAC).
We hope you were able to solve the problem and remove the stuck CD or DVD. If all these methods do not produce results, then you need to take the computer to a service center - this means the problem is in the hardware.
Sometimes Mac owners encounter a problem: their favorite CD or DVD gets stuck in the computer. Unlike PC users, Mac drivers can't eject it the normal way because Mac slot-loading drives don't have physical buttons. What can you do to remove a stuck disk in a Mac?
How to remove a stuck CD or DVD from a Mac?
- The simplest and most obvious way is to move the disk icon from the desktop to the trash can in the Dock or select “Eject” from the menu bar.
- If you are running a virtual machine, such as VMFusion, make sure the CD is disabled in the virtual machine. Sometimes the disk then appears in Mac OS X.
- Restart your Mac while holding down the mouse button. Hold the button until the disk appears or you see the login screen.
- Launch Toast Titanium and select Eject Disc from the menu.
- Sometimes the Eject Disc command in iTunes helps, even when the CD or DVD is not visible in the Finder.
- Open Disk Utility, highlight the drive in the left pane and click the Eject button.
- Some Mac drives are equipped with an access hole that allows you to remove a stuck drive using a paper clip or a needle.
- Open Terminal and write “drutil tray eject” to eject the disc/tray and “drutil tray close” to close the tray
- Restart your computer while holding Command + Option + O + F to enter the Open Firmware prompt. Type “eject CD” without quotes and press Return. The Mac should eject the disk. To launch OS X, type “mac-boot” without quotes. Press Return and your computer will begin booting. (Does not work on Intel Mac due to lack of Open Firmware)
- If your Mac has an Eject button on your keyboard, restart your computer while holding down the Option (Alt) key. When the drive selection screen appears, release the Option key and press Eject on your keyboard.
Fair, not overpriced and not underestimated. There should be prices on the Service website. Necessarily! without asterisks, clear and detailed, where technically possible - as accurate and concise as possible.
If spare parts are available, up to 85% of complex repairs can be completed in 1-2 days. Modular repairs require much less time. The website shows the approximate duration of any repair.
Warranty and responsibility
A guarantee must be given for any repairs. Everything is described on the website and in the documents. The guarantee is self-confidence and respect for you. A 3-6 month warranty is good and sufficient. It is needed to check quality and hidden defects that cannot be detected immediately. You see honest and realistic terms (not 3 years), you can be sure that they will help you.
Half the success in Apple repair is the quality and reliability of spare parts, so a good service works with suppliers directly, there are always several reliable channels and your own warehouse with proven spare parts for current models, so you don’t have to waste extra time.
Free diagnostics
This is very important and has already become a rule of good manners for the service center. Diagnostics is the most difficult and important part of the repair, but you don't have to pay a penny for it, even if you don't repair the device based on its results.
Service repairs and delivery
A good service values your time, so it offers free delivery. And for the same reason, repairs are carried out only in the workshop of a service center: they can be done correctly and according to technology only in a prepared place.
Convenient schedule
If the Service works for you, and not for itself, then it is always open! absolutely. The schedule should be convenient to fit in before and after work. Good service works on weekends and holidays. We are waiting for you and working on your devices every day: 9:00 - 21:00
The reputation of professionals consists of several points
Company age and experience
Reliable and experienced service has been known for a long time.
If a company has been on the market for many years and has managed to establish itself as an expert, people turn to it, write about it, and recommend it. We know what we are talking about, since 98% of incoming devices in the service center are restored.
Other service centers trust us and refer complex cases to us.
How many masters in areas
If there are always several engineers waiting for you for each type of equipment, you can be sure:
1. there will be no queue (or it will be minimal) - your device will be taken care of right away.
2. you give your Macbook for repair to an expert in the field of Mac repairs. He knows all the secrets of these devices
Technical literacy
If you ask a question, a specialist should answer it as accurately as possible.
So that you can imagine what exactly you need.
They will try to solve the problem. In most cases, from the description you can understand what happened and how to fix the problem.
My first incident as a Mac user happened after 4 months of completely normal work on a MacBook...
Dear Reader, if you have an Apple Mac computer (it doesn’t matter whether it’s a laptop or a desktop) that is equipped with a slot-loading optical drive, then I strongly recommend that you read this material to prevent this situation from happening to you.
So, it all started with the fact that I wanted to write data to a disk on a PC computer. The process, for some unknown reason, was terminated due to an error. After this, Windows refused to read this DVD-RW disc.
Apparently, due to the fact that the disc is only “half-written,” the system cannot identify it.
Usually, in such a situation, I try to erase unwritten data from a disk on another computer. Oddly enough, it often helps!
This time I decided to try cleaning a DVD-RW disc using a Mac.
I inserted the disk into the drive as usual; The laptop confidently “swallowed” it, but the system refused to read it. Finder did not recognize the connected drive. It was also not possible to mount it manually.
I decided that the disc was probably completely damaged and decided to simply throw it away.
But it's not so simple:
The MacBook refused to eject it. The disk inside rotates without stopping and the eject button does not perform its function.
This is where the main problem began...
If you own a MacBook or iMac desktop computer, then you've probably noticed that Apple doesn't include mechanical removal of optical claims in its computers.
Compare: on a regular PC laptop it is possible to remove the disk mechanically. As a rule, there is a small hole, in the presence of which you can, say, use a straightened paperclip to force the tray to open:
Unfortunately, it is not possible to remove the disk from a MacBook mechanically:
(the hole on the left is the Kensington Lock)
Then I realized the full scale of the problem...
A frantic monitoring of all kinds of forums on the Internet began in search of “colleagues in misfortune”...
It turned out that this problem is quite common among users of Apple laptops, and often this cannot be done without a service center...
However, users try to solve it in various ways. From quite banal ones: like manipulating terminal commands, to quite crude ones: forcibly removing the disk physically using tweezers; prying it up from below with a credit card, etc.
Naturally, I didn’t want to “physically influence” in any way, especially since all these manipulations usually end with a call to the service center. And this didn’t attract me at all. The point is not even that the nearest service center is 400 kilometers away, but that a lot of time needs to be spent on this.
The search continued, and software methods were finally found...
I tried to operate through the terminal: enter commands to eject the disk - to no avail; I tried to go into OpenFirmware during boot (help: something like an analogue of BIOS, so to speak) and enter commands to force the disk to be ejected - also to no avail.
A very interesting method helped me, which I did not find right away: to force eject the disk during a reboot, you need to press the right touchpad button and hold it until the disk ejects.
It worked! And with great relief I moved the disk from the MacBook's tray to the trash bin.
Dear Apple computer owners!
AND Based on my experience and what I have learned about the problem of optical disks getting stuck in the drive, I want to give you some practical recommendations that will help you minimize the risk of the problem occurring:
1. Always pay attention to which side you insert the disc. Do not mix up the sides or insert the disc backwards! In this case, problems with extraction may occur.
2. Do not insert discs that are heavily damaged (obvious scratches or chips) into the drive!
3. Do not use optical disks that cannot be read on other computers or are read with great difficulty (very slowly, with individual programs or the operating system as a whole freezing while accessing the disk)!
4. If the disk is still stuck, do not try to remove it mechanically: do not shake the laptop, do not place foreign objects in the drive, and do not try to insert another disk into the drive!
This can permanently damage the drive and then you will not be able to do it without contacting a service center.
5. Do not try to disassemble the laptop yourself and try to remove the optical drive from the case! These actions may damage your laptop!
If no software methods help, then it is better to contact a service center.
‘s sometimes encounter a situation when, at one “wonderful” moment, an inserted CD or DVD does not want to come out. Having researched this issue a little, I found the most likely physical reason for this phenomenon. As the service workers suggest: the protective rubber bands fit too tightly to each other. Now I will give all the ones I know software methods for removing the disc, that is, without physical intervention. They will be useful to you if the disk does not want to come out only due to software problems. I most likely won’t write articles about another reason - the disk rests against the case/protective rubber bands because it is uneven or damaged. The network is full of material, including photo and video reports.
I have roughly divided the extraction methods using “keyboard” manipulations into several: the fastest for beginners and methods used by more experienced users.
First thing to try
Mac OS X features
- If the eject button does not help, hold it longer until the following image appears on the screen:
- The eject icon in the Finder sidebar. Next to each connected disk/volume, there is an eject icon on the right. Clicking on it will eject the disc.
- With the drive selected in the sidebar, press Command+E.
- Disk context menu in the same sidebar or desktop icons. From it, select Extract "Disk Name".
- Try dragging the disk icon to the Trash (if you have it in the Dock).
- Restarting may also solve the problem
Mac OS X programs
- Disk utility that will help you eject a disk even if Finder doesn't see it.
- also has the Eject Disc function from the Control menu
- Check your programs that you use when viewing/listening to files from a CD or DVD. There is a possibility that they also have a disk eject function.
Third party programs
There are utility programs created specifically for removing stuck disks or volumes, and there are programs that work with disks. The first category is called Force Eject Mounted Volumes. I placed its icon at the beginning of the article because it best conveys the meaning.
Programs that work with discs (burning, copying) usually have an eject function. I know exactly what is in .
For advanced users
Options for the Terminal
- drutil eject
- hdiutil eject -force "/Volumes/DISK NAME"
- diskutil eject /Volumes/DISK NAME
I'm not good at -nix systems, so if there is anything to fix or add, I will be grateful.
Different boot modes
- Boot your computer by holding down the right mouse button or trackpad. After booting, the disk should come out.
- Boot into Open Firmware with hold Command+Alt+O+F. After the welcome message, type eject cd , press enter and wait a few seconds. As soon as the disk comes out and Ok appears next to the command, enter mac-boot. After the enter key, the computer will continue to boot normally.
As an option
If you have one or more operating systems installed on your computer, try removing the disk through them.
If all this does not bring results, there are two options left: contact a service center or external intervention using available tools. The second option is the most extreme, suitable only when the service center is not available to you. Well, or you yourself are an Apple service center employee.
Remember: everything you do with your computer is on your conscience. There is no need to put in suspicious, damaged or low-quality disks, and then, who knows how and with what, get them out.
