Q: Drive won't read any dvd-ejects it automatically after spinning some time

10.6.2 does not fix the problem either. I still cannot burn CDs or DVDs.

CDs (because of their low data density) and DVD videos (because of the extensive built in error correction on DVD video discs) are the "easiest" discs for any drive to read, sylven.

Your symptoms indicate that either the lens is dirty or misaligned, or that the laser power in your drive has deteriorated.

Nothing whatsoever to do with firmware or software corruption I would think.

Cheers

Rod

You need to be focusing on hardware issues, American in Japan.

In almost all cases these problems are occurring because the drives concerned are either dirty or defective. It is not the sort of issue which an OS update will fix.

Rod

MBP 2.4. I had no issues until I tried to install Snow Leopard DVD shipped to me from Apple. I can insert my Leopard DVD that came with my machine and it reads it everytime. New Snow disks just spin 3 times and eject.

They had several Engineers talk me through things on the phone with no luck. They sent me another disk. Same problem.

They then let me go into the Apple store and they tried a 3rd disk from the store. The genius then just hooked up his external drive and installed Snow. He said they were aware that there was an issue of some sort with the drives reading the newer format DVDs. My drive reads most DVDs now, but never the Snow disks and even some blank CDs that used to work. Seems to be related tot he format. I have one type of blank CD media that works everytime, and others that never work.

The Leopard DVD was a single layer disc , emanude. The Snow Leopard disc is a dual layer data disc. Much denser data and harder to read if your drive's hardware/ lens cleanliness / laser aren't all 100%.

If I were you, and your computer is out of warranty, I would run a cleaning disc now, before it deteriorates further.

Cheers

Rod

Rod, do you work for Apple?

No matter what problem or set of circumstances people talk about here, all you can tell them is that their lens is dirty, and that running a cleaning disc will probably fix it.

That is not the case much of the time. I took my machine to two different Genius Bars, and the first thing both techs did was try to clean the drive. It didn't help. Only when my drive was changed out did the problem go away. After owning several computers, some with disc-insert-style drives, this is the first time I have had to replace a drive in 23 years.

You seem to be suggesting that the entire world of Macintosh users have suddenly encountered a very dusty environment, or that they all have suddenly dirtied-up their optical drives somehow.

No, there really, really is a problem with the drives that Apple installs on its machines now, and it's been well documented, here and elsewhere. These drives are not just dirty. They are faulty. Please allow people to talk about their problems without automatically preaching "Clean your drive." Let somebody else in on this discussion, please.

No, I don't work for Apple, Dave.

If you read my previous post in this thread you will see that I say that :

In almost all cases these problems are occurring because the drives concerned are either dirty or defective. It is not the sort of issue which an OS update will fix.

I am very tired of people assuming that if they wait for the next "OS" or "firmware upgrade" or some such it will fix the issue. It won't.

Apple, unfortunately in my opinion, advise against cleaning these drives. That is fine for the owner when they are under warranty and no doubt brings in a few dollars from repair services! Apple simply replace the drive in such circumstances. It is mighty expensive, however, if you have to pay for the drive yourself.

My own experience, however (based on using Macs with slot loading drives over many, many, years) is that regularly cleaning them can prolong their lives dramatically . It is not a panacea, but it has kept the slot loading drives on many of the Macs that I look after running for a long, long time, and "resurrected" many drives that other people had given up on. In fact I doubt that many of these drives that are more than a year or two old will continue to operate properly WITHOUT regular cleaning.

The drives that Apple use are exactly the same as the drives installed by most other reputable manufacturers and they suffer problems at about the same rate. Bleating about 'defective Apple drives" is really no more sensible than bleating about "defective Dell drives" or "defective Thinkpad drives" and the like. They are all victims of the nature of technology and none are "better" or "worse" than the others from what I can see of the statistics.

When one of these drives ceases functioning properly (regardless of the brand of computer), or doesn't do all that it should, one has two choices. Try to fix it or replace it. If it is under warranty the answer is simple. Take it back and get it replaced.

If it is not under warranty however, replacing it is going to cost you quite a bit of money. The first step is to try to clean it. It works for a lot of people and it doesn't work for others. If it doesn't work and you are out of warranty then you fork out your $$$ for a new one, but I sure as heck would prefer to try a cleaning disk before forking out for a drive replacement.

There are two things that usually "kill" DVD burners. Dirt on lenses and deteriorating or misaligned lasers. Dirt happens all the time. It gets flung around by spinning discs, seeps in from people's cigarette smoke, you name it. Lasers are susceptible to both heat and age, both of which are unavoidable in a notebook computer. The two processes are not independent but additive. An ageing laser is more affected by a dirty lens than a new one and vice versa.

As long as people have Applecare or a warranty, fine! Get the drive replaced! Once you are out of warranty, however, and have to pay for the replacement yourself, then cleaning the drive as a first step makes one heck of a lot of economic sense. It won't work for all but it does work for many, saving them a lot of dollars.

But don't kid yourself either , that there is something peculiarly "problematic" about the drives that Apple use. They are just the same, from the same manufacturers, as the ones that you will find in most quality notebooks, suffer the same sort of (high) failure rates, and are susceptible to the same problems.

I'm not for a moment suggesting that cleaning the drive will fix them all (regardless of brand) , but it still makes danged good economic sense as the "first step" when you run into disk burning or reading problems and your drive is out of warranty. I'm amazed at how many people never even bother to try it!

Heck, if I had simply replaced all of the optical drives in the out of warranty Macs in use in our household instead of cleaning them when problems first arose I'd have spent a couple of thousand dollars! As it is, as luck or otherwise would have it, with a bit of regular TLC they are all (touch wood - from a sample of an iMac G3 slot loader, a G3 and a G4 iBook, an iMac G5, two MB's and two MBPs) still working fine!

Cheers

Rod

I was expecting that 10.6.2 update could have fixed this, but it hasn't, at least on my MB. Anyone out there luckier than me?

This is actually getting ridiculous.

My (currently) three year old iBook G4 had the optical drive die on it in January. No warning. Though it's had some mileage on it, I paid almost twice as much for the G4 as I would have for a comparable PC at the time (but don't get me started on PCs.. lol). I'm hearing no complaints from PC owners about their laptop drives going out on them. Possibly one, but one out of how many people I know with PC laptops? In fact, on all cd-roms I've ever owned, I've never once seen one crater. Granted, they were older generation models from a simpler time. And a couple that I still have are nearly 10 years old now.

Now my MBP is having problems, and I only bought it in February. I think I can really confuse you all with this one.... This MBP appears to read my OSX installation DVD just fine. But it can't read the Applications DVD. In this case, it's not the DVD. I tried that same DVD on the G4 and it was fine. What DOES happen on the MBP, is after spooling around for a couple mins (to no avail), it decides that it's a blank DVD. How convenient.

I'm going to have to agree with everyone who thinks Apple needs to pull their socks up on the topic of optical drive issues. It can't be a fluke that I know two people (one of which I believe is Dave, unless there's two Dave Shepherds lurking around) who have had drive problems recently, and currently I'm on my second drive problem (the G4's drive was replaced at a pretty penny).

AFAIK, I am the only Dave Shepherd lurking here.

I agree that it's getting ridiculous. I certainly can't really argue with anything that Rod said in that last post, in principle. It is a good idea to carefully maintain and clean any piece of precision equipment, including optical disc drives.

I am sure that there may be lots of Dell and Toshiba owners who have frustrations with optical drive failure. I don't care about them. I'm not a Dell or Toshiba owner. I'm a Mac owner. Any problems they might have do not speak to my/our point at all.

These Mac laptops are very expensive. Back in the 80s and 90s, I was confident when I bought an Apple computer that I was getting a superior machine for the extra money I spent. It wasn't just about the OS, it was about the whole package.

In the past decade, however, equipment quality has dropped off precipitously. Drives fail now in situations where they didn't used to fail. I can't explain this by saying that people are now more careless about cleaning them or something. Users who are used to having reliable optical drives no longer have reliable drives. It's that simple.

Incidentally, I have never heard or read anything anywhere in which Apple advised against cleaning optical drives. I'm really not sure where that assertion comes from, Rod.

It is clear that Mac users in large numbers are frustrated with these new unexpected drive failures. I know I'm not imagining this, and I doubt others are imagining it either.

I'm on my 3rd dead drive for my PBG4. Very frustrating. The computer hasn't been out of the house more than 10-15 times in it's life.
My Mom bought the exact same computer because she saw ours and loved it (and I could do IT for her). She has hers in the same room as her cat's box. Litter is dusty as anything can possibly be, and her drive still works (as of the last I've heard).
My first 2 died after 12 months each. the third one died in 95 days.
There is definitely a bigger issue here.

I like to believe I'm actually fairly careful with my two machines. Currently my shiny MBP is on the sidelines after a bizarre problem where it started lagging horribly for no apparent reason (going to be taking it in to be looked at, since it's under warranty). And now the optical drive is clearly on its way out (so that machine is clearly useless to me now).

Both machines are transported in a padded laptop bag, and never tossed around. The optical drives hardly ever get used. I don't burn music to CDs since my car has USB capabilities. The only real use I get out of these drives is for backing up information on to DVDs, or installing new software.

They also reside in a smoke-free environment. If the current Superdrive in the G4 dies, it will not be replaced. There's no point. I'll just be forced to ferry files over to my PC (which I use primarily to play one game.. lol) and burn the DVDs there.

That's a great response Rod, well written and thought out. I too have had many macs since the start...

Pray tell, why is my one year old 24imac two months out warranty the o n l y one out of the six series of macs I've owned that has a failing drive??? They've existed in the same conditions, maintained in a similar fashion and this one is the only one that is exhibiting such a problem. If anything I would say my 24imac is babied in terms of the way I use it; which makes all of the silence from Apple pathetic.

I have many of the problems mentioned here and recently purchased, in desperation, a cleaning disc that the drive refuses. It only reads 5% of the audio cd's I try to import. It still burns dvd but requires multiple attempts to eject.

As I've said here before I'd gladly pay extra for a robust super drive that doesn't fail after a year of light duty use. But the treatment of getting consumers to spend an extra 150.00 or so for a warranty for a computer that has a drive that will likely fail and require $350.00 to repair is beneath the loyalty of Apple's customers.

These wonderful computers are expensive to many, and people INVEST in them expecting quality in all aspects of their performance. Thirty plus pages of loyal consumer complaints and concerns will not go away... and this is only one thread of many.

On a previous post which was deleted I was directed to contact the "Apple Customer Relations Group". I've searched the Apple site I can't find it. Can you direct me to it or provide the contact number/web address???

I seriously don't think this is a dirty lens issue... if you have any sway with anyone at Apple I urge you bring this issue forward as one that seriously will effect customer relations in the future, it has mine.

best regards,

steve

Here's a more definitive troubleshooting. After upgrading to Snow Leopard and doing all the upgrades, I cannot insert any Video DVDs, but the Data DVDs (like software installation DVDs) work fine. The videos however and even blank DVDs get ejected immediately.

So I made a backup of everything and erased the hard drive and reinstalled 10.5. Now everything worked fine, so I was thinking maybe there could be some upgrade issue. So i erased the hard-drive again and installed Snow Leopard (clean install). Same issues again appeared -- no blank or video DVD allowed in the unit.

Since then I have reinstalled a clean copy of 10.5, tested again the blank DVDs and Video DVDs to make sure they work (they did) and upgraded to Snow Leopard immediately. Same problem now... I can't use my DVD drive, but only for data DVDs.

My MAC:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP51.0074.B01
SMC Version (system): 1.33f8

HL-DT-ST DVDRW GS21N:

Firmware Revision: SA14
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -R DL, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO
Media: To show the available burn speeds, insert a disc and choose View > Refresh

System Software Overview:

System Version: Mac OS X 10.6.1 (10B504)
Kernel Version: Darwin 10.0.0
Boot Volume: Macintosh HD
Boot Mode: Normal
Computer Name: MARIAN VASILE’s MacBook Pro
Secure Virtual Memory: Enabled
64-bit Kernel and Extensions: No
Time since boot: 2:06

Marian, This is an amazing contribution to the discussion! Thanks for taking the time to do this. I hope you sent this through Apple's official channel. Before your post I was certain it was purely a hardware issue, but this seems to prove that at least to some degree 10.6 and 10.5 have different levels of tolerance when it comes to reading discs.

In my case I was experiencing problems even before Snow Leopard came out, and after the drive was replaced it worked fine (under 10.5 and still after I upgraded to 10.6).

I think this is why this source of this issue is difficult to pinpoint; there are people who have the problem no matter what (hardware), people who have the problem and only realized it when trying to install Snow Leopard since that was the first time they used their drive in a while (hardware), and finally there is a group of us who didn't have the problem but whose drive stopped working only after an upgrade (hardware that was just on the edge of failing, but with 10.6 no longer functioned).