Mac Lion does not burn or read DVD-R CD

I'm using Verbatim CDs Magnavox DVDs and cannot burn anything on my 2009 MacBook Pro. Works fine on my wife's 2011 Mac Mini and my son's late 2005 Mac Pro Tower. My wife and I are both running Lion. This problem did not ossucr immediately after installing Lion. A few weeks ago I ran Drive Genius and rebuilt my directory and could burn DVDs. Tried again this morning and nothing shows up on the desktop.

When I try buring in the Finder my computer just sits there tellng me "To begin, insert a blank disc." iTunes starts thr process, but returns the same error message another poster noted earlier. I have a Genius Bar appointment tomorrow morning, but am thinking of cancelling it. What's the point if this is a known issue?

Apple needs to fix this yesterday.

I wish my fix had been that simple. I contacted Apple Support and after a few phone calls they determined the SuperDrive could not cimmuicate fast enought to keep up with Lion, so they replaced the SuperDrive under AppleCare. Now it works fine with the old, slow 5400 RPM stock HD, but I still cannot burn DVDs through the Finder with my 240GB SSD installed. I can burn DVDs at 4x using DragonBurn, but my 2009 MBP will not recognize blank CDs no matter what I do. At least I can now rip music CDs to iTunes again.

So I ordered a Data Double from Other World Computing and will live without an internal SuperDrive. I'm planning to order 100 custom USB flash drives to hand off files to my customers.

A few weeks ago I got a tech support rep on the phone and he sent me an app to read what was going on when trying to use my SuperDrive. I sent the file the app generated to the rep. The next day engineering got back with him and said Lion was sending data to the SuperDrive faster than it could process, so Apple replaced the SuperDrive under AppleCare. When I got the MBP back everything worked fine with the stock 5400 RPM drive, but as soon as I installed my SSD the SuperDrive starting acting up again. I ordered an OWC Data Doubler, replaced the SuperDrive with a Seagate 500GB hybrid drive and installed the SuperDrive in an OWC external USB case. Now I can read, burn and copy every CD or DVD I have tried.

Seems the problem we have here is a failure to communicate.

Not sure what you mean. My DVD/CD reads and burns no issues.

You are saying you have this issue?

Make sure you have a superdrive to burn DVD's (surely 2008 is a superdrive?). If not it will just spit out a blank.

>About this Mac>More info>Hardware>Disc Burning

DVD-Write: -R, -R DL, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW

You could try a different brand name and see if this makes a difference.

You could try a laser head cleaner, bought just about anywhere DVD/CD are sold.

report back

Try resetting the PRAM

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

Feedback http://www.apple.com/feedback/

or

If you want to report it to Apple's engineers, send a bug report via its Bug Reporter system. To do this, join the Mac Developer Program—it's free and available for all Mac users and gets you a look at some development software. Since you already have an Apple username/ID, use that. Once a member, go to Apple BugReporter and file your bug report. The nice thing with this procedure is that you get a response and a follow-up number thus starting a dialog with engineering.

I have been having the same problem! My machine is brand new and bought a week or so before the release of Lion. No issues before the the "upgrade". Now it is hit and mostly miss when i insert a DVD-R as to whether the disc is recognized or not. And after burning a DVD-R, that is if the machine recognized the blank DVD, i can reinsert it to have the MacBook Pro spit it out....

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3265203?answerId=15946832022#15946832022

So: I just got off the phone with apple "care". After going through a few things like rebooting/resetting the guy tells me probably an "intermitant optical drive problem" and i need to take it to a certified apple repair store. This machine is just one month old and it was fine until the switch over to Lion.

Some $1500.00 dollars later (not to mention the iPad i bought at the same time and the iPod i bought last year--oh yeah.. the iPod crashed in the first few months and they had to replace it with a "refurbished' unit) and i have a machine that does not work properly.

Am i a happy apple customer? No....

I had the same issue on my Macbook Pro this morning. It wouldn't accept a CD-R or DVD-R (both Verbatim). My last burned DVD was the one in Snow Leopard for the installation of Lion. I got some DVD+R now and hope they will work.

JJ

I tried to burn some data to a CD-R and had the same problem. The blank CD didn't appear on the desktop or in the Finder sidebar on Lion. But iTunes launched and asked if I wanted to burn a playlist, so the system was detecting the disc.

Then I remembered that I had changed my CDs & DVDs setting in System Preferences to launch iTunes when a blank CD was inserted. I opened System Preferences -> CDs & DVDs and chose "Open Finder" for the "When you insert a blank CD:" setting.

Solved the problem for me. Now when I insert a blank CD-R, it shows up on Desktop and also in the Finder sidebar. Dragging folders to it, then clicking the "radiation hazard" burn icon burns the CD-R now. (Late-2008 first-gen unibody MacBook Pro, Mac OS X 10.7.1, stock SuperDrive, Philips CD-R media.)

Thank you, SockRolid. Your solution solved my problem. I have a MacBook running on Snow Leopard.