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Why won't my expensive MacBook Pro play ANY DVD's?

I have a MBP 3 yrs old which has had extremely light use in that time - at home. I never have tried to play a DVD until now and guess what? NO DVD's at all will play - whether commercial (Region 2) or home-burnt. All I get is the alert message : "The disk you inserted is not reradible by this computer".


Excuse my rant but what a joke - another Apple fail. Why is it that absolutely every PC I have ever owned with a DVD drive has played all DVD's and this Apple cannot handle it? I don't get why after spending £1800 this is the pathetic result. I expect it to work.


I want it to play my DVDs so please what is the answer? Is there some special set up procedure that only experienced Mac users know?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2.8Ghz Intel, 4Gb DDR

Posted on Nov 24, 2012 9:08 AM

Reply
14 replies

Nov 27, 2012 1:24 PM in response to etresoft

etresoft wrote:


Cobalt19 wrote:


Is there some special set up procedure that only experienced Mac users know?

Yes. Take DVD, insert into slot. If it fails, take your machine and the DVDs that won't work into an Apple store. DVDs are just pieces of plastic with a thin optic film. That can and do go bad.


Indeed the art of sarcasm is not dead, so let me don my asbestos suit whilst I answer...


I have taken my machine and DVDs into the store - twice. Tonight I spent 1.5 hrs in there (after booking a ten minute Genious Bar appointment) whilst a helpful Apple guy tried it all and got the same results as I did. None of the films DVD's will play but guess what - not all the DVDs are broken - his 'Apple store' DVD wouldnt play either so his conclusion was that the Superdrive could not deal with DVDs because the 'pits' are bigger (than in CD's) and the Superdrives laser cannot cope with reading them although it can deal with burning to CD's and strangely enough it can read my Logic Installation and Audio content DVDs which strangely are...DVDs!

So he changed out the Superdrive and retested and..... it still did not work. He re-oinstated my original Superdrive and came to the conclusion is that there is some corruption in the OSX. I have never re-installed OSX so it is still a mystery.

Nov 28, 2012 3:41 PM in response to sig

Yes - you may be right. It is not practical for me to get to another Apple Store. I will try another 'Genius' at this store. I am non too optmistic now as the Genious was not much of a... genious!


My MBP has been a problem in so many ways after a year. It needed a new screen within the year because the first one randonly threw up lines and was bled of colour. It has been slow to boot for ages, my Logic Studio Pro music app is running slow, none of my browsers (safari, Firefox and Google Chrome) will render any maps (Google, Bing etc) - and now I have a DVD drive that wont play DVDs. I think I bought a 'lemon' rather than an Apple. I wanted to be excited by Apple as this was the switch to Apple for me - I had hoped to get away from the annoyances you get with Windows PC's - but the fact of teh matter is I have experienced more problems with this Mac - hence my anger leaking through on these posts.


I will see what they can do. The 'Genious said I would need to back up everything and then he would clean the HDD and rebuild all the software from scratch. That sounds extreme. I wa under the impression that Macs didnt get this type of problem. I guess I was mistaken.

Nov 28, 2012 5:32 PM in response to Cobalt19

Backing up is standard practice prior to bringing your Mac in for service. It should be routine anyhow. However, the genius mentioned it so you're not awash when you get back a working Mac with all your files gone. They mentioned that to me just for a battery replacement. It's SOP. But do it.

Nov 28, 2012 5:37 PM in response to Cobalt19

FWIW ... I would consider any service visit for my MBP to be the possible death of data on the disk.


More to the point, any personal critical data (tax returns, bank account passwords) are now out of your immediate control and you may want to remove some personal data before taking it in (restore it later).


Not that Apple Geniuses are dishonest, but it is "out of your control".

Dec 1, 2012 2:05 AM in response to steve359

Hi

Thanks for yr comments & suggestions. I will have to buy a big enough drive to back up to. Genuis guy said to use Timemachine but I have never used it. I have 363Gb to do. How long that takes I dont know. I have avoided Timemachine as I thought it might just introduce yet more problems and slowness to my Mac. Is Timemachine the best process to use do you think?


I get yr point about sensitive personal data. My Mac was in their backroom for 90 mins so I if there was any desire for them to get at my data in that way it could have happened already. I work on the basis that they are honest and wont do that kind of thing. Hopefully that is how it will be.


If you have any suggestions for me regarding a decent back up drive (I am in UK) then I will be please to hear it. I do have a Synology Diskstation on my network at 500Gb capacity but theres no space on it to back up my Mac. I supppose I could buy a new drive to hang off the Synology (i.e. back up the Synology data to the new drive then use Synology for backing up the Mac).


Regarding the original SUperdrive problem on my Mac - have you ever herad of such a thing where something in th OSX could prevent the drive from reading commercial DVD films or data burnt to DVD whilst it will stil read and install software from Logic Pro?

Dec 1, 2012 8:20 AM in response to Cobalt19

SuperDrive is by reputation one of the less reliable types. Too many just expect their SuperDrive will die before their goldfish die.


As to type of external ... try macsales.com for a good variety of drives. The only consistent warning is that WD "combo sets" (WD drive inside an enclosure with its own powersupply) are unreliable. This is not because the WD drive dies, but because the control cards between the drive an computer dies an can scamble the data on th disk as it dies.


Good combo sets are LaCie or "enclosure plus drive" sets of the "OnTheGo" variety.


Or you can buy an toaster enclosure with FW interface (I have this one: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/FWU3ES2HDK/) and a WD bare drive (stay in the "Black" version instead of "Blue" or "Green" in WD). These toasters can use any 3.5 or 2.5 in drive you happen to find hanging around.


Buy a drive that is 2-3x the data you will be backing up. I suggest 2 TB for you since you are starting at 350GB. That can take hours even at FW speeds.


I suggest downloading CarbonCopyClone (bombich.com) instead of TM for this backup. It is a $40 download, but makes a bootable copy of your internal partition. Bootable means you cn fire tha up if your internal is dead or erased, then "clone back" from external to internal.


Get CCC, the extenral drive, then ask back if you have questions about making the clone.

Dec 5, 2012 9:59 AM in response to steve359

Hi

Thanks for your comments and suggestions. I didnt realise until buying the Mac that there were so many regular issues across the machine. I was under the impression that they 'just worked' as they were advertised as doing.


Anyway - I like your idea about the 'Toaster enclosure' but I have to admit I did not know what on earth that was until I clicked on your link. It seems there are not many makes that allow both FW and USB transfer, and being in the UK I wont be using Macsales which is an USA retailer so not practical. I will search a bit more.


You mentioned the WD drives and their colours - I found a review on the 'Red' version which apparently is configured for NAS drives. I have the Synology DS209 NAS which has 500Gb drive and instead of getting the Toaster set up I could just buy a bigger disk - the trouble is (not for this forum I suppose) I would not know how to get data from the 500Gb drive to a replacement bigger NAS drive (say 2Tb). Any ideas? Have you heard of WD REd?

Dec 5, 2012 10:13 AM in response to Cobalt19

Only the SuperDrive seems to be the bad part. But it is a thin "slide feed" device ad Apple is at the mercy of people who make thin drives that fit MBP. Overall very reliable systems.


"Red" is not something I am familiar with. But I assume it has some optimizations for multiple-access instead of Black which is single-user-access.


You can use CarbonCopyClone ($40 download) to copy entire partitions en-masse (worth the $40 IMHO). NAS would I assume have a real USB or FW port to make transfer of the 500GB easy (except for the time involved).

Dec 5, 2012 12:28 PM in response to Cobalt19

Cobalt19 wrote:


I didnt realise until buying the Mac that there were so many regular issues across the machine.

There aren't. It is just that Apple sells millions of machines so there are many reported hardware failures. People who don't have hardware failures don't report that fact.


You mentioned the WD drives and their colours - I found a review on the 'Red' version which apparently is configured for NAS drives. I have the Synology DS209 NAS which has 500Gb drive and instead of getting the Toaster set up I could just buy a bigger disk - the trouble is (not for this forum I suppose) I would not know how to get data from the 500Gb drive to a replacement bigger NAS drive (say 2Tb). Any ideas? Have you heard of WD REd?

A NAS is just going to open up another can of worms. Buy a cheap external drive, plug it in, when it asks if you want to use it as a Time Machine drive, say "Yes". Wait 4-5 hours. You're done. The Time Machine backup is bootable and will allow you to restore from it in another few hours.

Why won't my expensive MacBook Pro play ANY DVD's?

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