Apple SuperDrive has no manual eject!

TidBITS Talk
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I’ve been using a USB SuperDrive for a long time (since 2011). And it’s been working great all this time.

Until tonight, when, while ripping an old album from CD (Jesus Christ Superstar), the disc wouldn’t eject. I’d push the button. The mechanism would make all the usual sounds, but the disc wouldn’t come out. Failed several times.

For some crazy reason, I assumed that this drive, like most other optical drives, has a mechanism for a manual eject. Like a pinhole where you could insert a paperclip. I was wrong. Nothing on the outside of the case (which I didn’t expect to find), and nothing on the drive mechanism itself (which quite surprised me).

I had to follow steps 1-6 of this procedure (thank you very much, iFixit!) to get the drive out of the enclosure. From there, I was able to remove the six screws holding the cover on the drive assembly and manually remove the stuck disc. And then put it all back together again.

Afterward, I tested the mechanism with several more discs (CD, CD-R, DVD, DVD-R), and all inserted/read/ejected just fine. So there must be something wonky about that one CD.

At least I still have a working SuperDrive (and I won’t be inserting that disc again), but now I’m all twitchy about slot-loading drives.

Once upon a time, I could just go buy a 5.25" SATA-USB enclosure and mount a bare drive in it, but those enclosures seem to be really hard to find these days. So I’ll probably go buy OWC’s Blu-Ray burner even though it’s more expensive than I want to spend.

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DVD Players For MacBook Pro
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Typical Apple, eh? Even the cheap Verbatim optical disc drive I recently bought has a manual eject pinhole (and a read/write LED)!

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Disk Utility wouldn’t eject it? Starting up the mouse button down? Those are both techniques I’ve used in the (not recent) past.

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FYI: I’ve bought several of OWC’s Mercury Pro Blu Ray burners over the decade or 2. I’ve found them to be solid construction and work well; but I’ve had the burner capability fail on 2 of them after 2-5 years on the job, with weekly burns onto M-DISC hi-density 50GB blu-ray discs.

(Not sure if it’s the burner hardware giving out after a period of time, or the “extra effort” (supposing there is some) of burning onto M-DISC or higher-density media.)

That said, even the original drives I bought, that can no longer burn M-DISC media, still read CDs and DVDs without problems, as well M-DISC blu-ray media that I’ve burned previously. So for your purposes, David, I think it’s a good investment.

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I’ve noticed that some older commercial CDs often are heavier/thicker than newer CDs, and software-based ejection commands aren’t able to eject them easily (or at all).

Sometimes they’ll eject with repeated attempts, but to avoid the issue, I’ve taken to burning CDs using iTunes for Windows on an old Dell with a tray-loading drive.

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I’d actually prefer that drive. Although it’s a slimline drive, it’s tray-based not slot-loading. So it shouldn’t have these kinds of eject issues. And it will work with non-standard size/shape media.

This is mechanical, not software. The disc mounted just fine. I was able to play and rip it in Music without any problem.

When I pressed the eject key, it unmounted and I could hear all the gears and motors of the drive’s eject system as normal, but the disc didn’t move. It remained on the spindle and re-mounted itself a few seconds later.

I assume there’s something about the disc in question that’s not quite right. Maybe it’s too thick, or slightly off-balance or something else. Because there were no problems with any other discs I tried afterward.

I also noticed that when ripping this disc, it only got about 5x speeds, whereas most discs I rip go at 12-15x. So there’s definitely something not quite right about it.

I think that may be the problem. But again, it’s not a software issue, but the ejection motor/mechanism in the drive’s mechanics.

When I give the eject command through any and all means, the motors all run, but the disc remains in-place.

And yes, I want to replace it with something tray-based. In addition to not having these kinds of issues, a tray-based drive will let me use non-standard disc shapes. I’ve actually got a bunch of 3" and business-card discs (including several that I’ve burned myself over the years). But none of them can be used in any slot-based drive.

OWC doesn’t make the drive mechanisms. If that fails, you should be able to replace it with any SATA optical drive, including the LG model that OWC resells, reusing your existing enclosure. That should cost less than a whole new OWC-branded drive+enclosure.

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I had a problem like that in my old Apple Drive and thought there was a paper clip eject on the far right of the opening (putting the clip into the slot on the right. I had a disc stuck in there and when the clip didn’t work, I tried the reboot mouse, which almost worked. Then I turned the drive upside down and did the reboot mouse click and it finally worked, but I do stick with my OWC drive now for burning and reading.

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The MacBook Air/USB SuperDrive shipped as two models: A1270 and A1379. If you review the iFixit drive-replacement procedure, you’ll see that the two models have different internal mechanisms.

The A1270 (early model) uses a generic PATA drive (which is fairly easily replaced), and that one may well have a manual-eject hole somewhere.

The A1379 (late model) that I have appears to be a custom model. Although it has an H-L (Hitachi-LG) logo on it, there’s also an Apple logo printed on the label. And there doesn’t appear to be a bridge board - the USB cable’s wires are soldered directly to contacts on the side of the drive (so I assume this model was purpose-built as a USB drive). And there doesn’t appear to be a manual-eject hole anywhere on the mechanism - I searched it thoroughly and poked a paperclip through every hole I could find.

Glad to hear it worked for you. I tried turning it over. I also tried it in several orientations with the drive removed from the enclosure. No luck for me.

But I did find that without the felt brushes on the enclosure to offer resistance, the eject mechanism is really powerful - it shot (other) discs across my desk.

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I know it’s off topic, but I can’t resist asking – which recording? :grin:

And on topic, if you want to use Mini CDs with a slot loading drive, it is possible to buy an adapter. This is an example, but there could well be less expensive options:

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The original 1970 “rock opera” concept album. Both of its discs have problems ejecting, although the second one worked after a few retries.

I remember those. I also remember that they sometimes come off of the disc while it’s in the drive, creating a real mess to clean up afterward.

But in reality, I don’t want to use a slot-loading drive at all. I bought the Apple drive because I needed something for my 2011 MacBook Air (this is back when software was still distributed on CD/DVD). And I’ve kept using it on my desktop after replacing my PowerMac with various minis.

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You might have tried slipping a folded strip of paper around the disc…

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Somewhat OT, but does anyone have any thoughts about getting an optical drive with a tray that just won’t open working again? It tries, but it’s really stuck somehow. It was in a G4 MDD; it shows the same symptoms out of the computer as well. I’ve never opened up an optical drive, and it’s probably not worth the bother, but I’m curious.

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You say it “was” in a G4 MDD. Does this mean you have already removed the drive from the computer’s case? If not, you should do that first. Here’s iFixit’s guide to removing the optical drive cage and its drive.

iFixit shows removal of the hard drive cages before the optical drive cage. I don’t know if that is strictly necessary, but it might be.

Once you have the drive out of the computer, there should be a manual eject hole near the drive’s door. See if shoving a paperclip through that hole will work. You may need to press hard. Once the tray opens a little bit, you should be able to pull it the rest of the way open.

If that doesn’t work, then you’ll have to open the drive to get the disc out. The exact procedure and difficulty will depend on what specific make/model drive you’ve got. You may need screwdrivers with Torx bits to do this. Just be careful and don’t force anything. And remember everything you did so you can put it back together again when you get the disc out.

Normally, I’d say “if you can’t get the disc out without damaging the drive, then it’s probably too far gone anyway”, but that’s a bit of a cavalier attitude today, since those old Macs use parallel-ATA drives, which aren’t made anymore. So be as careful as you can to get the disc out without breaking anything.

If you have no choice, a replacement drive will require either buying old/used parts or having to use a SATA-PATA adapter.

Good luck with it. Feel free to share photos if you think you need further assistance, although it will (of course) take quite some time doing it that way :slight_smile: .

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There probably isn’t a disk in the drive, at least not one that will mount. That much I could see when I was working on the old G4. I only discovered that the tray would not open when I wanted to install something from an optical disk. I swapped in an old CDRW temporarily and tried the drive in an old ATA enclosure. No luck there either. It actually has an open/close button, although the faceplate on the tray was removed at some point, and I can hear it trying to open. I can’t recall if I tried sticking a paper clip into the little eject hole or not but it’s another thing to try. It looks like it might have been a LaCie external at some point: there’s a little LaCie label and serial number.

I was able to get a drive on eBay that works in the G4.

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As far as I know, all optical drives have an eject button. Apple doesn’t expose this button through the enclosure, but it’s always there.

Removing the faceplate is a necessary part of installing an optical drive in those G4 tower cases. If you leave the front of the tray’s faceplate on, it will get caught on the case and won’t open. I did this myself when upgrading the drive in my QuickSilver-2002 system.

If the motors are trying to turn, then it could be a few things:

  • Something could be stuck in the drive, preventing the tray from moving
  • A gear could be stripped, cracked or otherwise broken. Those plastic gears can get brittle with age and will break eventually. (Many people working with old Mac floppy drives have experienced something similar with the eject-gear cracking.)

If you remove the cover and look inside, the cause might become obvious. Depending on what it is, it might or might not be fixable.

Glad to hear it. I did some Amazon searching (filter it for “IDE” drives, since “PATA” or “parallel ATA” returns lots of SATA drives) and found some units listed as new. I assume they’re “new old stock”, since nobody has made any PATA drives for some time.

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I am also using the SuperDrive successfully for ripping video with my 2012 Mac Mini, but fortunately haven’t had this issue thus far, probably because it seems the same DVD-RW discs, over and over. I’ll keep the iFixIt link handy, just in case.

I also have a Pioneer BDR-XD08B, which works very well with my MacBook Pro M3. I highly recommend it for performance, compactness, and manual loading.

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The seller of the Pioneer replacement drive claimed it had been pulled from an MDD, but the faceplate was on the tray and of course it didn’t open. I had to pull it out, remove the faceplate, and reinstall it.

The sad stuck drive is now down in the recycling. Opening it and futzing with it resulted in the tray opening exactly once. The interior looked pretty clean, but the parts of the drive that weren’t black looked a bit yellow, so there may have been some brittle areas. I decided that it was not worth more of my time.

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In the Terminal one can write:
drutil eject external

But to turn the drive upside-down was a new one for me. Good tip.

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As I wrote a few times, above, there is no problem getting macOS to send the eject command to the drive. The problem is that with that one specific disc, the drive motors were unable to physically move it out of the drive. All the usual motor/gear sounds were made, but the disc remained in-place.

All of the various software “fixes” assume that the disc is not mounted, meaning there is no Finder icon to select and use for ejection (by dragging to the trash, or via menu command or keyboard shortcut).

But none of that is applicable here, because the disc mounted without problem. And my keyboard has an eject key, which also works when nothing is mounted in the Finder (it also opens the tray of an empty tray-mounted drive).