mac | How to force eject of a stuck CD/DVD in Mac OS X
October 4th, 2008 at 19:18
Most of us love Mac OS X as it just does what we expect. Unfortunaly this is not always the case :/
A good example is the eject-function of CDs/DVDs. It can happen that the drive seems just to be locked, not displayed at all or similar issues. I have seen several problems with CDs/DVDs on Mac OS X in the last 2 years while using it as my primary operating system.
There are several things you can try if you end in such a problem, lets hope one of the ideas work for you.
Things you can try:
- If the disc is displayed on your desktop try to drag the icon to your trash or use eject option in your right-click context menu
- If the disc is displayed in your finder try to use the Finders eject icon or the eject option in your right-click context menu
- Reboot your Mac and hold the left mouse button / laptop button while booting until the disc is ejected. This can result in a longer booting process but should eject the disc without problems.
- Reboot your mac and hold the Option/Alt key on your keyboard. This should end in a dialog offering all boot-devices your Mac realized. Now press the eject button on your Mac keyboard and hope it ejects the dics
- Disk Utility would be another thing to test. Open it, select the drive you want to eject and selectthe eject button in Disk Utility
- As i am a terminal-lover one of the first thing i always test is the drutil command. In my case: drutil tray eject to open and drutil tray close to close the drive again
- Some burning applications like Burn or Toast offer an application related eject function. This can solve the issue too, so give it a try.
- iTunes offers an eject disc button too which might work too. Another idea, another thing to test
- If you are running a virtual machine like VMware or Parallels while realizing your eject problem be sure your virtual machine is not blocking your drive. If that is the case, unmount the drive in your virtual machine and try to eject the disc then in Mac OS X.
- Finally the old shutdown & restart trick … sounds random – is random – but might help aswell
Links:
- macfidelity – using the drutil command
- Apple – Hint for PowerPC macs using Open Firmware
- MacOSXHints – Drutil hint
- Macrumors Guide – Ejecting a drive
Tags: cd, drive, drutil, dvd, eject, ejecting, intel, lock, ppc, stuck
November 16th, 2008 at 22:00
The problem is when an applications jams at kernel level. By example iTunes with a CD, DVD Player with a disk or even iTunes with an iPod. In the iPod case you can just pull the plug, which deals it.
The same would work for for ejecting the driving, physically, however not every Mac or mac drives has a small hole where you can put a de-folded paper clip and push to eject the drive. This leaves us to software solutions only (considering a reboot is the worst case scenario).
Often, when an app freeze in kernel level, the rest of all the GUI apps tend to freeze with it, because all the GUIs are related to LoginWindow process I think.
Bad thing about the mac pro: you can’t insert a paperclip. You have to reboot.
November 18th, 2008 at 16:50
True – i focused only on software-issues here in this post.
Best regards
fidel
November 27th, 2008 at 20:28
This was a very helpful post. VMWare was running and was apparently blocking my Mac OS from recognizing the CD. Thanks for taking the time to post this tip.
November 27th, 2008 at 20:42
Hi dionak,
good to know, thanks for your feedback
March 12th, 2009 at 13:26
The last tip about running parallels was right on! I didn’t even realize I had it running…It was the last thing I would have though of, Thanks!
March 12th, 2009 at 13:26
Great – Thanks for the Feedback Mark
April 7th, 2009 at 20:47
[...] mouse button trick requires that you hold it down until the disc comes out. I just read something else that is new to me but might be of help: [...]
November 9th, 2009 at 21:01
Tried everything… then realized that “restarting” wasn’t the same as “shutting down” and “booting”. When I shut down the computer the DVD player stopped completely and when I did a fresh boot I wa able to eject the disc.
November 9th, 2009 at 21:03
@Scott:
thanks for this additional hint
I’ll add it to the article.
Greetings
fidel
December 24th, 2009 at 07:52
thank your article.
July 27th, 2010 at 20:51
I had also an eject problem of the DVD device on Mac Pro (10.6.3).
The problem came up suddenly. I have updated the MAC software regularly.
The Parallel application was also used.
My workaround was that I had to reboot the Mac OS X.
Either Snow Leopard upgrade did not solve this problem.
Later on, I observed that the MenuMeters application was not up to date.
I updated it up to 1.4b4, and it solved this problem finally!
July 29th, 2010 at 13:59
Thanks svantteliini – while i have to admit that your hint tops all others regarding the ‘freaky-ness’
Best regards
fidel