superdrive not loading discs after upgrading to el capitan

Thank you so much! This helped me! 🙂

Good to see this working for some people at least. I have one of the first 27"iMacs (Late2009) a great machine but El Capitan or Yosemite both stop my superdrive working and make the internal SD card reader temperamental. None of the fixes worked for me, I had to back up Home folder and go back to Mavericks, where both drives work 100%.

Disappointing that Apple release software that stops their computers from working. Main reason I moved to Mac back in the day was stability and reliability, as OS built for the machine, guess thats becoming no more the party line.

Takes a whole day to back-up/reinstall OS and all my software and get iMac back to operational, so means I will be staying on Mavericks as don't want to risk the updates again.

Good luck with the work arounds guys.

I said, with drwilczur's method (changing the com.apple.boot.plist file) it worked for me but I had to restart the computer every few hours to keep it happening. I'm starting to wonder if that might not be some freak of my software configurations.

Has anyone else tried the fix and had it working permanantly?

INHIBITION FROM UPDATING

Neilarm's problem has been around for a long time now. A friend of mine still uses Windows XP. The rest of this post is about it.

I know of one way to deal with it but it's paid software (SuperDuper!: $28). You also need at least one external drive for a special kind of backup.

A SANDBOX BACKUP

SuperDuper! is primarily backup software. For a very basic backup function we can use it for free. For our purposes here, though, we can use one of its advanced functions, sandboxing. We create a special kind of backup called a "sandbox" on an external drive and then use this as our startup drive while we decide whether to upgrade or not.

The sandbox has a copy of all the system files but not our user folders. With it as our startup drive, all system changes (including changes to apps) affect only the sandbox, not our internal drive. Other changes — documents, user preferences, anything that lives in our user folder — are saved on our internal drive as usual. The user experience, though, is no different from normal.

If we apply a change to the operating system it affects the sandbox. Then we automatically see the result as long as we continue to start up from the sandbox.

If we stop using the sandbox as our startup drive and start up the old way from our internal drive, we revert to the old operating system (including the applications folder) untouched but we still have all changes to our user documents etc.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH A SANDBOX

I've used this and it works well. We get to try a system update and just trash it if it's no good (erase the sandbox). There are some things I'd suggest with it, though, according to my understanding:

1) Just use the sandbox as long as necessary. You could go on using it forever but the computer will run faster if the internal drive is the startup drive.

2) Be careful to keep the sandbox connected as best you can while using it. If it gets disconnected the computer is sure to crash. The more often that happens, the more the chance of software going bung.

3) Your old Applications folder stays as is on your internal drive, untouched, along with the rest. Changes you make to apps like updates are applied to the sandbox. When you stop using the sandbox you'll have to apply those changes again if you want them.

4) This kind of sandox is designed for people who have their computers set up the no-brain way: all their user stuff is in the usual places — user folders (home folders). At least that was the way it worked when I last used it a couple of years ago. However, people who have rebelled and put stuff of their own in unusual places — outside user folders — have to modify the sandbox manually to allow for this. I had to do this for a friend but it wasn't hard after all.

I've also used it for a system upgrade (not just an update) and the results were fine there too. In this case, though, there is a special thing to be wary of:

5) It's extra safety to have a backup besides the sandbox, a backup of the ordinary kind. Time Machine would do. Buy another drive for this if you don't already have one.

The reason is that after a system upgrade some stuff in your user folder may not work any more as is — things like your mail or photos. When you try to use these things, the newly upgraded operating system will ask you to let it change them in order to work a new way. If you just go ahead and click OK, they will work, but not when you stop using the sandbox. The old system on your internal drive won't understand the changes. If this happens, the only copy you will have of this old stuff without the changes will be in the Time Machine backup.

As far as I know, the developer of SuperDuper! has not built any extra feature into sandboxing to cope with this, but I may be wrong. However, if you just have the extra Time Machine backup, you can take it all to Apple's genius bar and dump it on them to sort out over a few days. That's what they're for, right?

AN EXTRA SAFETY MEASURE — A DUPLICATE BACKUP

For those of us who are well enough off to afford extra drives, yet another backup can be useful here too — a duplicate or "clone" backup of the traditional kind (not a sandbox). This gives you one more option for solving a problem. The software I know of that do this well are SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner.

It is ideal for the situation where you just want everything back the way it was in a quick, no-brain do-it-yourself way. You make the duplicate at such and such a time. When you want to trash any and all changes on the computer since that time you just boot from the duplicate and do a restore — a backup from it in reverse, to your internal drive.

If you use a duplicate for backup in this way, be aware that it's an extra thing for convenience — not a substitute for a Time Machine backup. They're different kinds and help you in different ways. For ordinary computer use if you only want to have one backup, it should be a Time Machine one.

Hello Guys, i've done this, and it worked for me.. MB PRO EARLY 2011...

Open the app called Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities), and type the following exactly as shown:

sudo nvram boot-args="mbasd=1"

it askes for your root/admin password and after you've pressed it it returns a blank line,

then type in

sudo reboot

and that did the trick for my external superdrive! doesn't work on my internal drive though :-(

Well nothing has worked for me. My SuperDrive is useless now and even after 4 updates Apple hasn't addressed this. Looking through these forums and the web this is a very, very, common issue and the requirement to edit the library (which did NOT work) is really unacceptable.

For the superdrive problem I tried this:

<<the problem is the lack of record "mbasd = 1" in the system. To solve this problem you need to open the "/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist." and edit "apple.Boot.plist" - Text Edit is sufficient.

The key "Kernel Flags" is empty. You must add between start and end string "mbasd = 1" and the problem is resolved.>>

The solution itself is not working, alone, for me, but during the procedure I noticed that the drive worked just fine when the csrutil was disabled...

Also the USB ports work fine now, in fact the problem is somehow linked to the SIP. For now I'm going to leave it disabled, waiting for a working solution.

Eight months later and I have the same problem. My superdrive does not work after upgrading to El Capitan. It does work when connected to another Macbook which has not yet been upgraded. I am just going to take it back to the Apple iStore and ask them to solve the problem. I have now spent hours and hours doing research. There is no solution!!

Finally solved the problem. Ditched the Apple Superdrive and replaced it with OWC Slim USB optical drive. Works straight away every time - CD; DVD...probably because it has a USB 'Y' cable which permits power from a separate USB port. Reluctant action but needs must!

DVDs were not loading on my iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010) running el capitan. It just spit them out.

The issue seems to one of preventing copies of dvd's being made on a mac. The dvd's that have any kind of protection on them are spat out.

Older dvd's without protection work perfectly. Could be wrong but... follow the money!

On Macbook Pro mid 2012 w/ El Capitan (built in optical superdrive) I've disabled the SIP (command "crsutil disable" in the terminal of the recovery mode, then reboot) the superdrive worked fine again. Since I've (r)enabled the SIP (command "crsutil enable" in the terminal of the recovery mode, then reboot) the superdrive doesn't work. So I've to disable the SIP to use the superdrive (built in optical) but it works. I would not recommend to leave disabled the SIP but you still can disable it while you need to use your superdrive and (r)enable it after you've finished your installation or whatever you needed to do. Hope this will help.

I can confirm that the Sierra (10.12) release fixed the issue where my Apple USB Superdrive stopped working properly with my Macbook Pro (Late 2013) running El Capitan (10.11).

Here's some background on my problem (again, now solved with Sierra 10.12):

I can confirm that my Apple USB SuperDrive worked on my Macbook Pro (Late 2013) with Mavericks and their external DVD continued to work after I upgraded to Yosemite. I noticed that the USB Superdrive stopped working after I upgraded to El Capitan. Yes, technically, you could plug in the USB SuperDrive and then REBOOT the Macbook Pro to get the DVD to work BUT that is NOT a fix. That's a hack! So, I opened a call with Apple and they first sent me a replacement USB Superdrive. The problem existed with BOTH my original DVD and Apple's replacement DVD (so I sent Apple their replacement DVD drive back). I spent over two hours working with three levels of Apple technicians over the phone until they finally admitted that I had "completed all the troubleshooting that they could think of". Apple said they would get back with me but they never replied. When I called and emailed to follow up on my call (using the ID # they game me), they never replied. Next, I tried using a non-Apple removable USB DVD drive and it worked! So this was definitely a compatibility problem between my Macbook Pro (running El Capitan) and their Apple USB SuperDrive. I then took the DVD Superdrive and my Macbook Pro to a local Simply Mac store where their overconfident lead Apple technician tried resetting a couple of things on my Macbook Pro. All his attempts failed to fix the problem. After staring at my computer for a few more minutes he triumphantly declared that the problem was the motherboard and he could order one and replace it within one week. I left the store. There's no way I was letting that hack (or his minions) touch my Macbook Pro. I continued to check many of these type of posts but I've been unwilling to implement any of the proposed workarounds because they did not seem to be endorsed by Apple (first, do no harm). I kept performing the incremental El Capitan (10.11.x) updates but none of them got the USB SuperDrive working. However, when I updated to Sierra (10.12), my USB SuperDrive started working again (as it did with pre-El Capitan).

I hope this helps.

This does NOT work. Same problem persists.😠