How to manually eject a disc?

Oh my goodness. Well, I became extremely patient, so after letting the computer sit for awhile to cool down and then repeating the steps of flipping it over and holding the eject key and failing, I just let the computer sit and spin for awhile. The computer then (to my surprise) began to boot normally, however the disk drive was still spinning. I got to the desktop and tried: 1) to "burn" a disk using a burn folder - froze the finder and had to relaunch, and 2) opened disk utility, which took a long time to access (b/c of the disk no doubt) <-I held the computer 45 degrees and held down the eject key twice. The computer released the disk and I promptly destroyed it(the disk). I am, however, debating on sending the computer to apple anyway. They might be able to put in a new drive. Any suggestions?<br>
iMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.1)

I finally got my disk out and, since I have AppleCare, I'm holding onto it a bit longer to see if it happens again. If anything, at least the longer I hold it, the better quality the "replacement" machines should be 🙂

Thanks for the upside down trick. I had tried several times cycling the eject mechanism via eject and mouse button restarts without success. I had the Apple Quicktime v1.0 for developers disk stuck in my MBP.

Regards,

Dave F

Ok I know this might sound really dumb but I had the exact same problem and was about to send my Macbook pro to Apple and get it replaced. All I did was boot up the Mac, wait til the grey screen came up with the cd spinning and then all I did was close the lid and let it "sleep" and came back 30 minutes later and it spit the disc out.

Not sure if it will work for you but it seemed that the Mac just gave up and spit the disc out after a little while.

Just to add to the list of tips, here's what happened with me.

A DVD got stuck in my MBP. The disc mounted and played. When I tried to eject, the disc would unmount, the eject mechanism would kick in, and you could hear that the disc was being ejected. However, the disc would then (at least this is what it sounded like) hit the casing and stop. With the disc still being in the slot, the drive mechanism would trigger and the disc would be remounted, etc.

This particular situation is slightly different from many of the others I've read in this thread, and in the other thread about the stuck CD-R. I had tried all the software "fixes"; I had tried tilting the machine (upside down and at 45˚); I had tried letting the machine cool down before repeating all the previous tricks; and I had even tried a couple of undoubtedly non-Apple approved tricks (e.g. pushing down on the casing above the optical drive as the disc tried to eject).

None of these worked.

I finally managed to eject the disc by inserting the corner of a thin laminated card (e.g. a video library card) about half an inch into the slot (about a quarter way across from the right). I used the card to feel for the edge of the disc, and then put the corner of the card on top of the edge of the disc (and not below as suggested in the other thread as a means to unmount the disc). With the card in place, I held down the eject. The disc unmounted and slid forward, and the card guided the disc out of the slot.

I don't know if many others have had the same problem as me, but if so, hopefully this trick will work.

This happened to me a few months ago. I think it was because the DVD was a bit thicker than normal. I sent my MBP in for replacement because technical support could not resolve the issue (also less than 1 week old). Anyway, it happened again and I held the system upside down and held the eject button and it popped out. Hope that helps.

I was surprised when I put in a blank DVD and nothing happened. I tried a bunch of solutions such as Disk Utility but the DVD wasn't showing up there, tried the terminal command - nothing.

Then a thought occurred to me, maybe Parallels was having a conflict - trying to mount it and not let OS X have it. Figures as soon as I shut down windows and quit Parallels the Window popped up asking me what to do with the DVD.

Probably not many of your situations but something to realize for the future.

Thanks. I had the same problem. After trying all the other methods, your tip did the trick. Cheers!

I finally managed to eject the disc by inserting the
corner of a thin laminated card (e.g. a video library
card) about half an inch into the slot (about a
quarter way across from the right). I used the card
to feel for the edge of the disc, and then put the
corner of the card on top of the edge of the
disc (and not below as suggested in the other thread
as a means to unmount the disc). With the card in
place, I held down the eject. The disc unmounted and
slid forward, and the card guided the disc out of the
slot.

I don't know if many others have had the same problem
as me, but if so, hopefully this trick will work.

Just to add to the list of tips, here's what happened
with me.

A DVD got stuck in my MBP. The disc mounted and
played. When I tried to eject, the disc would
unmount, the eject mechanism would kick in, and you
could hear that the disc was being ejected. However,
the disc would then (at least this is what it sounded
like) hit the casing and stop. With the disc still
being in the slot, the drive mechanism would trigger
and the disc would be remounted, etc.

This particular situation is slightly different from
many of the others I've read in this thread, and in
the other thread about the stuck
CD-R. I had tried all the software "fixes"; I had
tried tilting the machine (upside down and at 45˚); I
had tried letting the machine cool down before
repeating all the previous tricks; and I had even
tried a couple of undoubtedly non-Apple approved
tricks (e.g. pushing down on the casing above the
optical drive as the disc tried to eject).

None of these worked.

I finally managed to eject the disc by inserting the
corner of a thin laminated card (e.g. a video library
card) about half an inch into the slot (about a
quarter way across from the right). I used the card
to feel for the edge of the disc, and then put the
corner of the card on top of the edge of the
disc (and not below as suggested in the other thread
as a means to unmount the disc). With the card in
place, I held down the eject. The disc unmounted and
slid forward, and the card guided the disc out of the
slot.

I don't know if many others have had the same problem
as me, but if so, hopefully this trick will work.

Exactly the same things happened in my MBP.

This trick worked, but be careful to make sure the disc has stopped spinning before you insert your library card. I had to put the card above the disc, not below it

I'm so glad you posted this response. This was exactly the problem I was having. I put in a blank disk while Parallels was running. No dialog box appeared asking me what I wanted to do and the disk would not eject using the eject key. I had no idea the Parallels OS had mounted and esentially locked the optical drive usage external to Parallels.

After reading your post I checked Parallels and was able to go to the "Devises" menu and unmount the CD/DVD drive. Instantly the dialog box appeared asking me what I wanted to do with the blank disk!

Thanks!

while burning a DVD my computer froze, so I forced quit.
After that my computer wouldn't let me eject the DVD.
It was acting as if there wasn't a disc in there at all.
So I restarted, and suddenly my computer was telling me I didn't have
a superdrive either.
I tried everything, and my mac mini doesn't have a pin hole,
So what ended up working, was while restarting the computer I held down
the option + command OF buttons through the entire reboot and a little screen popped up that said computer wasn't able to read the DVD and gave me the option to eject, which I chose and vola!! The disc ejected...I was so happy, hope this helps for those in the same pickle.

Hi there, please refer to this link:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060814211608242#comments

hold the trackpad button down while powering on the machine.
and keep it held down.

I tried almost every advice offered here, to no avail.

This worked for me:

I stuck my left index fingernail under the top of the slot and slightly pulled upwards as I pressed the eject key. The disk came into sight (for the first time in hours) and I was able to grab its clear edge between my right index and thumbnail. The drive put up a fight, trying to once again devour the hapless DVD-R (I call it "Lando"). I didn't let go (though I was half blind from all those years in carbonite) and the battered disk was safely in my hands. There is a clear mark running across the printable side of the disk.

The disk is a Verbatim Photo Printable DVD-R and of regular size, although the printable area extends far more to the middle of the disk, than in other DVD-Rs I've used. I believe that the MacBook case is a bit too cramped or reacts to heat unfavorably.

I don't think anything - save a replacement drive - can fix this.

Regards,

Tommi

When booting, hold down the space bar and press the eject button like crazy. It sounds weird, but it worked for me!!!