How to Remove or Hide "Remote Disc" from the sidebar (cd's, DVD's and iPods) by using workgroup manager

Wait one more thing: Is the system you are administering from a OSX server system?

Right. I will check this.

If your goal is to prevent disc access, or any other external device, then you're in luck! Just go to Workgroup Manager, select the users or computers, click Preferences and select Media Access. Change the Manage setting from Never to Always and deselect the devices you want to restrict access to or instead tick the require authentication box next to the allow box to require authentication to use the apparatus.

Good morning Rod,

OK, I have to say I failed. The reason is I did not get my network at home to even show me that Remote Disk. Meaning I still have no clue where in you environment it comes from. I still believe there must be some system somewhere sharing an installation CD. I tried turning DVD sharing on on m systems, but it did not show up. I installed ARD on my Server system and looked at everything, to no avail. Sorry, but I simply don't know where this comes from 😟

You could though, after following my previous answer, go to Workgroup manager once more and click the computer(s) you want to apply this policy on, click Preferences, Finder, Preferences, select 'Always' and deselect 'Hard Disks', 'External Disks', 'CDs, DVDs and iPods' and 'Connected Servers' if you so wish. Don't forget Apply Now.

If that doesn't meet your expectations, in the same window you could click 'Use Simple Finder' all together.

How did the first part of my previous post work out for you, only keeping external disks checked?

What I meant was for you to tick Use normal Finder, with only External Disks selected.

With the accounts you use, you could set the Mobility preferences as such:

Groups work too...

You could try another approach I've found, check out this document starting page number 16, that part covers setting Finder's sidebar preferences.

Thank you for this as it worked successfully. I have struggled all evening to get my iMac DVD drive to eject a DVD without success, and finally removed the DVD drive altogether. So infuriating when the remote disk icon does not disappear as well. I have to admit that, since upgrading to OS X 10.11.1 I have had nothing but time-consuming difficulties with my iMac. I wish there was a simple way to go back to OS X 9. From the comments I see in the forums I am not alone.