optical drive not working after upgrade to yosemite

That's disappointing that downgrading didn't fix it. I'm debating on whether or not to do a clean install of Yosemite to see if that fixes it. Sounds like I shouldn't be too hopeful.

I Had the same problem. Would kick CD or DVD out and would not mount. I decided, whay they hey. I attached an external HD via FireWire, used Carbon Copy Clone is clone to external drive. used Disk utility to boot from external drive, downloaded Yosemite to a USB Thumb Drive, and then used disc utility to wipe my internal drive. I actually wiped it twice, just in case. I then inserted the Thumb Drive that contained Yosemite install app, and installed to internal HD. rebooted to Yosemite drive and Optical Drive is working. Reads music CD and DVD's. I have not tried burning a CD with it as yet. Absolute clean install solved the problem. Hope this helps.

I just updated to 10.10.1 and now my dvd drive is working 🙂 Yay!

RRead my last post, it fixes the problem.

I had this same problem - the SuperDrive wouldn't even take a disc in after I updated to Yosemite. Before I tried resetting anything I powered my computer completely off, let it sit a couple minutes, then booted up. Now my SuperDrive works just fine. Very weird.

Resetting the SMC does NOT do anything. I am having the same failure since Yosemite upgrade

How do you downgrade to Mavericks from Yosemite? Which absolutely ***** as an operating system. Reminds me of the frustrations I had with Windows. Zero confidence in this unnecessary "improvement"

I had exactly this and I've just managed to get it working again. No promises, but here's what I did.

I put a DVD in (if not already not already one there) and pushed it gently but as far as it would go (not forcing it, just pushing it past the opening using a bit of card) - it wouldn't grab it though but I left it sat there.

I did the shutdown and did the SMC reset (power cord out for a couple of minutes) then restarted.

Shutdown again and whilst starting up told the Mac to boot from the CD drive (holding C down on keyboard straight after turning on and kept it held during startup). The drive whirred a bit after about 10 seconds.

When it showed the start up progress bar and sounded like it was starting up from the hard disk, I took finger off the C key and moved to holding down the eject button on the keyboard. Finally after about 30 secs or so, the eject icon appeared on the screen and after a few more seconds the DVD popped out.

Putting it back in it grabbed it happily and is reading it fine.

Don't know if this will help you too - but just in case.

Wow, don't understand why this worked but it made mine work. In my case, my drive WOULD pull in the disc, but wouldn't mount; it would sometimes sound like it was spinning the disc slowly, then eject it after a minute. I had to keep pushing it back in during the boot process when it would spit it out (holding C the whole time), but then my computer spun up the disc for real, and started up with the disc mounted. Thanks for the tip!

Same problem with my MacBook Pro, 15-inch, Late 2011 over here. This is beyond ridiculous.

So here's a rough sequence -

- Internal Superdrive was fine on Mavericks. I would use it between both OS X and Windows (Bootcamp) and even within VMWare Fusion occasionally

- Upgraded to Yosemite earlier this year, didn't need superdrive as much but still used it occasionally

- Burned audio CD about a month ago, don't remember any problem

- Tried to burn another audio CD a few days ago, would not take disc - as if there was some physical block (but there was no disc in there). Needed to reboot, tried SMC and other resets.

- Now it would allow the CD to go in but superdrive would not react or pull the cd in by itself - drive acted dead.

- I left it alone, came back the next day, and tried to feed it a disc and the drive magically woke up and took it but did not mount. I go to sleep (with the disc still in the laptop).

- In the middle of the night, there were strange spinning and scratching noises being made, this woke me up - being half-asleep, I hit eject several times and prayed to God that the demons would escape. After a few seconds, it spit the disc out, I was scared to re-insert it since I was trying to sleep. Ridiculous.

* Before the last item above: In addition to resetting various hardware things, NVRAM, SMC, I tried holding C during boot, pressing and holding trackpad/mouse during boot, and a few other alleged tricks, drutil commands, etc. None worked and none recognized the drive, even Recovery mode > Disk Utility doesn't show drive and the drive hadn't been making sounds on boot as it had usually done.

* In addition - booting into Windows via bootcamp showed no drive.

The laptop has been clean, the disc is clean flat. Laptop has always been used indoors and in a clean environment - no kids around to stick weird stuff into it, etc. I don't understand the sudden malfunction. I don't believe this is just coincidence and that after such a relatively short period of time the internal drive (which I occasionally to rarely use) would die all of a sudden. And I don't think the Yosemite install is just coincidence, considering the others having very similar symptoms.

Apple: Does Yosemite break internal Superdrive on some models? If not, why the trend?

Bootcamp drivers also insufficient for superdrive after Yosemite install?

I had the same trouble on a Macbook Pro 5,2 after upgrading from Snow Leopard to Yosemite. I tried booting the computer from an external drive running Snow Leopard and the the internal superdrive worked indicating this was a problem with the Yosemite OS and not an optical drive issue. After unsuccessfully trying numerous fixes to no avail, I tried to use my daughter's external superdrive as a work around only to find Apple has artificially precluded it's use on many Macs. I found a simple fix to this (inserting the term "mbasd=1" in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist). This not only fixed the problem with the external Superdrive, it resolved the problem with the internal drive as well. See the following threads providing details on this fix:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20111107064435227 (scroll down to reply by CyborgSam2011 - I recommend against the Kext modification discussed at the top of the thread)

Also at:

http://www.wyzant.com/resources/blogs/275369/apple_s_external_superdrive_can_wor k_on_older_model_macs

For the record, after doing this procedure my CD drive worked like normal (in other words, I did this one time and now the drive works as it should).

External SuperDrive DVD player fix - SOLVED!

This solution worked for my Superdrive, which I had installed in a USB external case, so now it can play movies using Apples DVD Player App, but additional steps may be needed, as I outline below. I had removed the SuperDrive from my mid-2009 Macbook Pro 15" 2.53 ghz to install a second hard drive with Other World Computing's "Data Doubler" adapter, and mounted the SuperDrive in an OWC Value Line SuperSlim external case.

I don't know if the two steps below are necessary, but I had done them first, because others suggested them as fixes before I found the solution in the 3rd step.

1) I installed Apple's SuperDrive Firmware Update 3.0, which is on Apple's support site at http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201953

2) Then I applied a fix on this page, http://www.hardturm.ch/luz/2011/10/how-to-make-the-macbook-air-superdrive-work-w ith-any-mac/comment-page-12/#comment-106449, using Text Wrangler to edit the preference file at /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist by adding code mbasd=1 between the two string values. However, that still did not resolve the problem. I left the preference file with the code “mbasd=1″ included, as outlined on that site.

3) Then, I used the fix at http://macriot.com/mcrt/?p=2294 which requires modification of some code embedded into OS X’s DVDPlayback framework; essentially replacing the words “internal” with “external”

Now my external Superdrive plays movies using DVD Player. 🙂

If you haven't done so yet, try installing Apple's SuperDrive Firmware Update 3.0, which is on Apple's support site at http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201953 to see if that might help, even though it's not specifically for that problem, it seems to be important for making external SuperDrives work in Yosemite, and it is one step I used to get my SuperDrive to work in a USB external case when plugged into my MacBook Pro.

Please let us know either way, whether the firmware update helps or not in your situation.

NO...it doesn't help. I have two 2010 Mac Book Pros and the optical drive isn't working for either one since the Yosemite update...just spins and spits out the disc....tried this firmware update but all it says is that my computer doesn't need it. so frustarating!!