I bought an Apple USB Superdrive disk reader. I can load my CD just fine but I get the message that the disk cannot be read. It has photos stored on it that I would like to open. Is there a fix or is there another product that would let me open the files? TIA
Is this by any chance an old CD burned with a HFS (no "+") filesystem – or with a combination of the HFS filesystem and a PC-readable one?
My understanding is that Catalina dropped all support – even read-only support – for the original HFS (no "+"), and that modern Macs will refuse to even try to read the PC portion of a hybrid CD if they see HFS on it! Because there may be a lot of family photos and older backup files stored on HFS-formatted CDs, this is VERY unfortunate.
I'm not saying that is what happened to you. There are other types of CDs (like MartinR mentioned) that might be difficult to read for other reasons. (Especially if a commercial photo processing service returned a disc where you were expected to run a special application to view the photos – and that application is now outdated.)
But if it is, the "other product" that might let you open the files would be
Is this by any chance an old CD burned with a HFS (no "+") filesystem – or with a combination of the HFS filesystem and a PC-readable one?
My understanding is that Catalina dropped all support – even read-only support – for the original HFS (no "+"), and that modern Macs will refuse to even try to read the PC portion of a hybrid CD if they see HFS on it! Because there may be a lot of family photos and older backup files stored on HFS-formatted CDs, this is VERY unfortunate.
I'm not saying that is what happened to you. There are other types of CDs (like MartinR mentioned) that might be difficult to read for other reasons. (Especially if a commercial photo processing service returned a disc where you were expected to run a special application to view the photos – and that application is now outdated.)
But if it is, the "other product" that might let you open the files would be
Two questions -
Do other CDs and/or DVDs work in this Superdrive?
What is the source of the CD with photos on it ... is it something you burned yourself, a commercial CD perhaps from a photo lab, an old Kodak Photo CD, etc? If you burned it yourself, what is the disk media (brand), how old is it and how did you burn it?
Thanks for the info. This is a disk that I uploaded jpgs on years ago. It’s a Sony CD Recordable CDQ-74A. The SuperDrive did load a different CD just fine. We concluded something on the files was making them unreadable. I found an older MacBook from 2019 and was able to load the CD directly and see my photos. Glad I still had it. It’s too bad that the newer Macs can’t handle old files. We returned the Super Drive and will use the old laptop. You had the best information of any of the many posts I researched online. Thanks for answering.
Apple external CD Superdrive not reading photos on disk
