optical drive won't open

I agree.

Apple really, REALLY, need a way to "Open the G'd D'mn Drive, ... G'd D'mn it!"

THEY ignored the PC standard of having a button to force an eject, so THEY have to give us a REAL solution, arrogant bstrds.

Hello all.
I've just started having this problem for the las week after a system hang.
I have two drive, the original Apple Optiarc drive, and a Pioneer drive in the lower bay.
Now, the Apple drive won't open (eject) with the following exceptions:
1. Boot holding down the mouse button (both trays open)
2. Boot holding down the option key to select boot volume.
3. Boot from a secondary drive (also w/ 10.5.6 OS)

If I get the drive to open via (1) or (2) above, and insert a disk, it is not recognized in the Finder or disk Utility.
Also, with no disk inserted, Disk utility states "Drive is busy"
I have tried resetting PRAM, SMU, Archive and install of OS X
No success.
Does anyone know how to eliminate the "drive is busy" error, via Terminal command or some other method?
Thanks in advance

I've just started having this problem for the las week after a system hang.
I have two drive, the original Apple Optiarc drive, and a Pioneer drive in the lower bay.
Now, the Apple drive won't open (eject) with the following exceptions:
1. Boot holding down the mouse button (both trays open)
2. Boot holding down the option key to select boot volume.
3. Boot from a secondary drive (also w/ 10.5.6 OS)

If I get the drive to open via (1) or (2) above, and insert a disk, it is not recognized in the Finder or disk Utility.
Also, with no disk inserted, Disk utility states "Drive is busy"
I have tried resetting PRAM, SMU, Archive and install of OS X
No success.
Does anyone know how to eliminate the "drive is busy" error, via Terminal command or some other method?

Did you set the jumper on the lower drive to CS (Cable Select)?

Just a Note:

This kind of problem is tied to the Whole OSX Problem of:

NOT telling the user WHICH APPLICATION is causing a problem, e.g. cannot empty trash because file is in use, NOT being able to eject a portable hard disk, and other "Who the H' Knows" type error messages. THE COMPUTER DOES KNOW.

PLEASE, Apple, TELL US which Application is causing problems !

Hi,
Thanks for your response.
I believe both drives are cable select.
Both drives have worked flawlessly for monthes.
This issue has just only been occuring for the last week, I think after a system freeze.
However, you did give me an idea to try a Master / Slave combo to see if that works.

Found it.

For me it was the RetroEngine background process (part of Retrospect backup app) that was locking the CD drive. The second I force-quit it, the CD drive spun up and ejected normally (until it relaunched itself seconds later). I'm sure other people have different processes keeping their drives busy, just happened to find mine through deduction and random quitting of processes. Good luck finding yours.

I've never used Retrospect, so ....

APPLE wake up. PLEASE give use a Force Eject (without the ultra-Stupid, 1970s paperclip "solution")

There's at least ONE way that crap-o-matic Windows is Superior to OSX !

Eran,

Thanks for the tip......However, I can't seem to get rid of the RetroEngine process. So my drive use is limited to a 2-3 second window, before it pops up again. What did you do to disable it?? Thanks in advance.

Narvon

Eran: thanks for the pointer! My DVD drive was locked by RetroEngine as well. I had thought it might be defective, so I replaced it (new Pioneer DVR-115 in place of old Pioneer DVR-112) and installed a second drive (BenQ) while I was at it. Lo and behold, the BenQ worked, but the new Pioneer was locked busy as before.

Narvon: to get rid of the RetroEngine, download the Retrospect 8.0 beta installer from www.retrospect.com, it has an uninstaller on the disk image.

My problem was caused by the RetroEngine of Retrospect 8.0 beta 2, and I think it started after I upgraded to OS X 10.5.6. There's a new beta 4 out now, but beta 2 was such a t*rd in every respect that I won't be looking at Retrospect again until at least the final release. The interface is a lot more confusing than it was in version 6 (who would have thought that possible?) and the engine failed in several different ways just doing a simple copy of a few thousand files.

It's a complete rewrite, they say, but that's not always a good thing. Most shareware is more polished in its beta phase than this POS. I'm considering ChronoSync as a replacement.

Thought I might add what the software is for future searches in the topic.


EMC Retrospect 8.0 backup and recovery software for the Mac provides small and midsize businesses with the reliability, ease of use, power, and flexibility they need to protect critical data on their Macs

I would imagine that for many users Parallels is the offending application, whose process is hogging control of the drive. In Parallels Virtual Machine configuration, I'd suggest switching the DVD to an Image File rather than one of the physical devices in the machine, or setting it to use the less-used drive if you have multiple optical drives.

I am having this same problem. i only have one drive...sad day i know. anyways, after i watch a dvd and forget to take it out, leaving it in the tray overnight, i suddenly cant eject. i have tried everything mentioned above. the only thing that works is shutting down and then restarting. this works but is a pain in my ars. please someone help us. it has to be a software problem, so there must be a fix somewhere.

My issue was not Parallels but Retrospect.

I tried to delete, but must have left something behind the first time. I reinstalled Retrospect then used Retrospects uninstall program to uninstall it completely. Once complete, both CD/DVD trays became operable. No issues since.

Hope this helps,

Narvon

I am having this same problem. i only have one drive...sad day i know. anyways, after i watch a dvd and forget to take it out, leaving it in the tray overnight, i suddenly cant eject. i have tried everything mentioned above. the only thing that works is shutting down and then restarting. this works but is a pain in my ars. please someone help us. it has to be a software problem, so there must be a fix somewhere.

In "Energy Saver" system preference, uncheck "Put the hard disk to sleep..."

NO JOY FOR ME!

For my situation (MAC PRO Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” - OSX 10.5.7 - SuperDrive shipped with Mac Pro) I inserted a CD-R "1x-16x Compatible" which has some images on it. The disc is made by Imation. Note, the disc works just fine in my wife's iBook G4 and my G4 tower with both running 10.4.11.

After the disc didn't mount and it just spun for a few minutes I tried the following:

1 - Hit the eject key - nothing
2 - Using disk utility tried to eject - nothing
3 - Tried using the Terminal and the drutil tray eject command - nothing
4 - Tried using the Eject Discs AppleScript - nothing, said no ejectable media
5 - Tried to Restart from Apple menu - machine would not shut down, had to hold in the power button to get it to shut down.
6 - Held down the mouse button (wired mouse only - glad I keep one around) during start before the chime - worked

So,

1 - Is this a bug re OSX 10.5 and if so wouldn't if be fixed by 10.5.7?
2 - Is this a Finder bug?
3 - Is this unique to the Pro Mac and the Apple shipped SuperDrive?

What a pain!!!!!