Sunday, August 20, 2006

MacOnMacs: Ejecting CDs/DVDs

I thought I'd put a quick little post up on this subject, as I know I've repeatedly had to figure out how to eject an uncooperative CD or DVD from my Mac's drive. Here are a few steps in order of ease (obviously don't type in quotes where you see them below - type in what's in the quotes :-) ):
  • If you don't have an actual "Eject" button on your keyboard (it should be in the upper right hand corner), try pressing and holding the F12 key, which can be assigned the eject function in some circumstances.
  • Can you see the disc's icon in the Finder or on the Desktop? Drag it to the Trash in the dock (which will change from a Trash icon to an Eject icon).
  • If this doesn't work then see if you can select Finder->File->Eject (command-E) to eject it.
  • You can sometimes eject a stuck disc from another application. Try using the eject button in iTunes (bottom right hand corner) and/or, if you have Roxio's Toast, then try Recorder->Eject (command-E) in Toast.
  • Do you have a Mac with a tiny hole to one side of your disc tray? Straighten out a paperclip and stick it in this hole to manually eject a disc.
  • If your disc is still stuck then open up Terminal (in Applications/Utilities) and type in "drutil tray eject" to eject the disc. If you then need to close the tray, you can type "drutil tray close".
  • Still no luck? Time to haul out the heavy guns and restart this bad boy. Restart your Mac while holding down your mouse button (I guess this would be the left button on a multibutton mouse) until it finishing starting up.
  • One last chance here. Restart your mac but hold down command-option-o-f (that's for an "open firmware" startup). At the command prompt type in "eject cd" and press return. Type "mac-boot" and hit return to finish starting up.
Hopefully one of those will get your disc out, as I've never had a stuck disc where at least one of those options didn't work. If you know of any other options then please share them with other readers here by posting a comment. Good luck!
Submit to:    submit MacOnMacs: Ejecting CDs/DVDs to digg.comDigg  |   book mark MacOnMacs: Ejecting CDs/DVDs in del.icio.usDel.icio.us  |   submit MacOnMacs: Ejecting CDs/DVDs to slashdot.comSlashdot

8/20/2006 10:11:00 a.m.  

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great article! The terminal way works for me.

August 21, 2006 3:29 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dude! Thanks for the terminal command line!!!! I use Retrospect backup at work with an external DVD drive and it does this weird thing where it locks out the drive to only be controlled by retrospect. Occasionally I find if leave the backup dvd in the drive over the course of the day it kind of gets 'stuck' in. You can't eject in any way, shape, or form - not even from retrospect. I am hoping that terminal line command will be the override I been looking for. 'Cause right now, all that works is the good ole reboot.

August 21, 2006 7:28 a.m.  
Blogger Jeff MacArthur said...

Glad to help, Indrayana! John, I hope that Terminal way works for you, I know what a pain it is to have to reboot to do this. :-)

Jeff

August 21, 2006 8:16 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's the guy from CommandN, keep up the good work.

cheers!

August 21, 2006 9:37 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Awesome info, you know I never even noticed the eject button in iTunes before now :P

And why command-E doesn't work to open the tray with not disc is beyond me. It would have been much easier the week I had to use a windows keyboard... though once I figured out the press and HOLD F12 to open the tray all was ok.

September 04, 2006 12:20 a.m.  
Blogger Jeff MacArthur said...

I forgot all about that press and hold F12, Tyroga - I'm going to add that into the list now - thanks!

Jeff

September 17, 2006 12:55 p.m.  

Post a Comment

<< Home