DVD drive not recognised

[rexanders]

A real oddity this. My read/write DVD drive has been working fine with my iMac (27in late 2014). Of late, however, although it lights up and the drawer opens when I press the button, it does not show up as a drive anywhere on the iMac.

So broken, you think. But no. It works fine with my MacBook Pro. It's unlikely to be the port or lead because, as I've said, it has power. Totally unrelated, but possibly so, the iMac is still running Mojave while the MacBook has been updated to Catalina.

 

[Slydude]

Please don't be offended by the following question: When the drive does not show up on your Mac is there a disc in it? If there isn't a disc in it, with the drawer closed, the drive will not show up.

Other things to check:

1. Go to Finder>Preferences>General and make sure the CD and DVD option is checked.
2. Go to the Apple menu in the upper left of the screen and choose About This Mac. Next Choose System Report. In the report that appear click on USB. Does the drive appear anywhere in that list?

 

[rexanders]

Please don't be offended by the following question: When the drive does not show up on your Mac is there a disc in it? If there isn't a disc in it, with the drawer closed, the drive will not show up.

Other things to check:

1. Go to Finder>Preferences>General and make sure the CD and DVD option is checked.
2. Go to the Apple menu in the upper left of the screen and choose About This Mac. Next Choose System Report. In the report that appear click on USB. Does the drive appear anywhere in that list?

No. I've tried all the obvious things. I even turned it off and on again, restarted holding down option command P R.

Is there some way I can check if the USB ports are functioning at full capacity?

 

[RadDave]

No. I've tried all the obvious things. I even turned it off and on again, restarted holding down option command P R.

Is there some way I can check if the USB ports are functioning at full capacity?

Hello - assume that you also followed Sly's suggestion about making sure there is a disc in the drive - since you state the DVD device has a tray, I'm assuming a non-Apple brand (I have Apple's SuperDrive). Also, I'm sure that you plugged in other devices (external HD, SSD, flash drive, etc.) into the 'malfunctioning' USB slot of the iMac and all was well? Finally, you could run the Apple Diagnostics Test - I've only use it a few times and cannot remember how the report is presented and whether the USB ports are tested, sorry? Dave

 

[pm-r]

I even turned it off and on again, restarted holding down option command P R.

You may want to go back over your system preferences and and check the various settings as a "PRAM Reset" as above will set them back to their default position, which might be "Off". Which might not be what you want.




- Patrick
======

 

[ferrarr]

Is the optical drive USB powered, or AC powered?

 

[rexanders]

Is the optical drive USB powered, or AC powered?

USB powered.

Patrick: It used to be called a PRAM reset, or zapping the PRAM, but apparently they don't have a P-ram anymore. It's now called resetting the NVRAM. Can't imagine what in System Preferences I would need to set if this has now defaulted something to "off". The point here is that it was working and now it isn't working, so I didn't think resetting something could do any harm.

RadDave: I rather imagine that running Apple's diagnostics test (where do I find that, by the way) will do just what Disk Utility does and report that there is nothing there.

 

[krs]

On your iMac running Mojave, can you hear the disk spinning and searching when you close the tray?
Or is nothing happening other than the light on the disk drive coming on?

2. Can you eject the dis by pushing the eject button on the keyboard?

3. Is your dirk drive connected directly to the iMac or via a USB hub?

My external tray-loading disk drive for instance would work fine when connected to a USB hub when running El Capitan but would not work via that same hub when I upgraded to Mojave. I had to connect it either directly to the Mac or to a powered hub.

 

[rexanders]

On your iMac running Mojave, can you hear the disk spinning and searching when you close the tray?
Or is nothing happening other than the light on the disk drive coming on?

2. Can you eject the dis by pushing the eject button on the keyboard?

3. Is your dirk drive connected directly to the iMac or via a USB hub?

My external tray-loading disk drive for instance would work fine when connected to a USB hub when running El Capitan but would not work via that same hub when I upgraded to Mojave. I had to connect it either directly to the Mac or to a powered hub.

Yes, it spins up lovely.

2. No

3. directly to the Mac

I have two hard drives and a selection of leads connected to the other ports and they are fine (actually one is somewhat intermittent but I think that's the drive rather than the port). Obviously, I've tried moving from port to port.

 

[RadDave]

USB powered.....................

RadDave: I rather imagine that running Apple's diagnostics test (where do I find that, by the way) will do just what Disk Utility does and report that there is nothing there.

Simply click on the link in my post which will take you to Apple's support article on the topic - requires a reboot w/ the D key held down - does more that 'Disk Utility' so worth a try. Dave

 

[harryb2448]

Open it up, pop in a DVD, and close. Then it may show up on the desktop.

 

[chscag]

A real oddity this. My read/write DVD drive has been working fine with my iMac (27in late 2014). Of late, however, although it lights up and the drawer opens when I press the button, it does not show up as a drive anywhere on the iMac.

Try resetting the SMC on your iMac to see if the drive is picked up again.

Rather strange since the drive is recognized by your MacBook Pro but not the iMac. If the SMC reset doesn't work, create a test user account, log on to it, and then see if the drive is picked up and recognized. You could also try booting to safe mode to see if that changes anything.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

just my 2pence worth here,


has the OP actually tried it with a Disk in the drive ?

normally the drive won't show up unless there is a disk in the drive.

and for disk utility to see it you would need to enable show all devices in there.

I may have missed the part that they have but from what I did read and im sure it was everything the OP didn't say they had put a disk in there while connected to the Mac.

 

[krs]

just my 2pence worth here,


has the OP actually tried it with a Disk in the drive ?

normally the drive won't show up unless there is a disk in the drive.

That was actually the very first thing that was asked - see post #2

Then again in post #4

And then again indirectly in reply to my question where the answer was that the disk spins up lovely in post #9.
Drive can't spin up with no disk in it.

The post #11 also infers that the problem is simply that there is no disk in the drive.

Besides, OP also mentioned in the very first post that the drive works fine with the MacBook pro.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

That was actually the very first thing that was asked - see post #2

Then again in post #4

And then again indirectly in reply to my question where the answer was that the disk spins up lovely in post #9.
Drive can't spin up with no disk in it.

The post #11 also infers that the problem is simply that there is no disk in the drive.

Besides, OP also mentioned in the very first post that the drive works fine with the MacBook pro.

now see this is where I got confused as are they trying it with a disk in the drive in the MacBook Pro ?

anyway lets hope for some clarification

 

[rexanders]

now see this is where I got confused as are they trying it with a disk in the drive in the MacBook Pro ?

anyway lets hope for some clarification

Okay, here's some clarification. Up in my menu bar I have a little kadoobry that looks like an underlined triangle. This is the eject button for the drive. If there is no disk in it, it merely allows a shortcut for opening and closing the drive. At present, there is a disk in it but clicking shows no drive.



Forget about the MacBook Pro. I only mentioned that to illustrate that there is nothing wrong with the drive.

I've reset the SMC and it has made no difference.

 

[pm-r]

Up in my menu bar I have a little kadoobry that looks like an underlined triangle. This is the eject button for the drive.

I think you will find that that little kadoobry thing in your menu will only work with built-in Apple supported optical drives, NOT external drives.

even though Apple includes an Eject key on its systems, the key will only work for internal drives (if you have two optical drives, holding the Option key when pressing Eject will eject the secondary drive).

If you have an external drive attached to your Mac, then the Eject key will not work; however, there are options for managing external drives using the keyboard. To eject an external optical drive in OS X, just enter the following command in the Terminal:

drutil eject -drive external

Ejecting external optical drives in OS X - CNET

But it sounds like you won't even need that command...




- Patrick
======

 

[rexanders]

now see this is where I got confused as are they trying it with a disk in the drive in the MacBook Pro ?

anyway lets hope for some clarification

So let's clarify. In the menu bar on my iMac there is a little underlined triangle which would normally allow me to open and close the drive or insert/eject a disk. Mine looks like this



Forget about the MacBook Pro. I only mentioned it to illustrate that the drive still works.

I've reset the SMC and it's made no difference.

 

[krs]

Just looking through the thread again....
The drive used to work with the iMac but then suddenly stopped working.
And the drive has shown not to be defective.

iMac has already been rebooted - this is one thing I would have tried.
The other is to reinsert the USB cable at the iMac end.

I find that the USB ports on the various Macs I had are a bit "flaky" (for want of a better word.)
When I insert a USB flash drive, the drive occasionally doesn't show up on the desktop.
The fix is to
1.Unplug the drive
2. Talk nicely to the Mac
3. Plug the drive back in
The flash drive will usually show up then.

With a USB flash drive one sees right away if the Mac recognized the drive or not
With a CD/DVD drive one has to have a disk in the drive and the drive has to spin up before one knows if the Mac recognized it or not.
In this case, the drive does spin up but the Mac doesn't recognize it.
So the drive is getting power from the Mac via the USB port but it doesn't recognize it for whatever reason

I doubt the USB ports on the Mac are defective, but one could just check each one in turn with a flash drive, make sure the flash drive shows up on the desktop, eject it and go to the next USB port and test.

BTW: I'm on Mojave with a 2012 Mac Mini and I don't get the little "kadoobry", the eject button icon in the menu bar - wonder why - probably because the 2012 Mini didn't come with an internal CD/DVD drive.

PS: One can skip step #2 ;D above, just reinserting still usually fixes the problem.

 

[rexanders]

Sorry, I seem to have posted the same reply twice.

I had thought the kadoobry showed the drive but I may be thinking of my old Mac Pro. Anyway, it's irrelevant. The drive doesn't show up on the desktop or in the sidebar, disk or no disk