Pioneer BDR-206bk blu ray drive issues

Linda Cameron wrote:

My Mac has not been asleep all day, but I usually do put it to sleep if I am away for a while and I don't like the idea I can never put it to sleep just because of this BluRay drive.

If you upgrade your firmware, let us know how it works out.

Will do. I've actually been waiting to see if someone else will take the plunge first, (I don't mean you - I've been keeping an eye on forums that deal with that sort of thing).

Ah, OK, thanks.

Just want to update my status with this player. I called OWC's tech support and they suggested I reset the PRAM. I did and my BluRay problem (disappearing from System Profiler and crashing some applications) did seem to go away for a longer time. I was able to put the Mac to sleep off and on for about 24 hours, but then I had the BluRay crash. The problem is not gone but I am now trying to keep track of what other applications I had open and see if I can reproduce the problem.

On another note, this BluRay drive is supposed to read and write to DVD-RAM discs. I have quite a few of those discs from back when I used a DVD-RAM drive. I am unable to write to any DVD-RAM discs with this BluRay burner. Can someone with this burner check that out to see if it is possible to write to DVD-RAM? I am thinking maybe it works on PCs and not Macs.

I filed an enhancement request and was asked for a System Profiler report so who knows.

Here is another update on my status: I decided to run Cocktail to delete cache and Repair Permissions. I do that about once a week using the default settings. When I rebooted into my normal system, the BluRay drive is totally not showing up at all. I rebooted a couple of times with no success. I rebooted and reset the PRAM and still no BluRay. I then booted into another hard drive with Snow Leopard and the BluRay drive appears to be fine there. When I come back to my main hard drive and boot up, the BluRay is gone again. I even switched to another User Account and on this system, no BluRay. The system I am running on both hard drives is the latest version of Snow Leopard. I could just boot from the other drive, but then I have problems running my Adobe software such as Photoshop and InDesign. Those applications do not like to run from another system which they were not installed on. Now what do I do? How can I make my main system recognize the BluRay player again? Before I ran Cocktail (which seems to have killed it) it was always working when I rebooted, although after my Mac would go to sleep, it generally would disappear. Now even that isn't working.

More to add: I forgot to mention I reinstalled Snow Leopard on the drive that didn't see my BluRay burner. After all the updates, I still had no BluRay visible to use. I then shut down, pulled out the optical bay with both drives and unplugged them both and plugged them back in. After rebooting into the normal drive I regularly use, my BluRay burner is now visible. For how long, I do not know. I sure don't want to have to go to all that trouble to get it to work every time it disappears.

same issue here, Mac Pro 5,1. I just started a new topic thread, and only saw this one after I had posted. crud.

I ended up sending my Pioneer Bluray burner back to OWC. The tech person I talked to on the phone said there was a known issue with that burner and Mac Pros. They sent me an LG Bluray burner and credited me back for the Pioneer one. The LG burner hasn't given me any trouble at all, although I haven't used it much yet.

In addition there is something else. Today after putting my Mac to sleep during a DVD. I came back and woke it. What message pops up on the screen?

"Waking up DVD Drive".

Will try some more stuff to see what's changed.

In case anyone is still watching this thread:

I have a BDR-206 in a nice Vantec external USB2 enclosure which was working perfectly in Snow Leopard that wasn't up-to-date. And I just updated my Mac Mini to Lion. Now the drive doesn't show up at all after boot. Nothing in the System Profiler or Toast.

I found out that I have to power cycle the drive to get it to show up. After that, it works perfectly again until I reboot. Then I have to power cycle it again.

I know this is hard for you people out there with Mac Pro towers, but you might want to try to power cycle the internal drive to see if it helps your problem. I know this isn't a fix, but at least you can see if works.

I'm still searching for more information or an answer to this.

How would you power cycle an internal drive? If turning off the tower and unattaching and then reattaching the power cord is the answer, then, yes, that does solve the problem ... but that's a bear to do everyday.