El Capitan killed DVD drive

I found this in an old discussion about a similar issue in Maverick. I'll try it out when I get home.

I'm not sure which command did the trick so please try running these commands from terminal in the following order.

drutil status

drutil info

drutil getconfig

drutil eject

I tried the commands you mentioned but none of them fixed the problem.

Seems to be commands for testing.

I still have the issue.

Thanks!

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same for me on both my Imac and the macbook pro - this seems like it is the operating system not two failed optical drives at the same instant! Has no one found a solution that actually works?

I still have the issue and no one seems to have come up with a workable solution except to install an older OS. Is this really the best that apple can come up with? There is nothing I can find on google to resolve this issue. Am I the only one?

my problem is not with external optical drives it is with the original apple drive in a iMac 27" and a 15" Maxbook Pro. Both are original apple macines so that theory seems like a red herring sorry

You were quick to judge on this one. I also upgraded to El Capitan today and my (internal) optical drive stopped working (not whirring very much and spitting the cd out after about 30 seconds). Internal, though, so definitely an Apple product.

I was trying to rip some music CDs I was given for Christmas (i.e. not Microsoft) and it *was actually working* for the first three or four, then stopped working mid-way through ripping another one. It's weird, isn't it, that it worked for a while and then stopped half way through. I've spent hours trying out solutions mentioned here and elsewhere, and so far to no avail.

As much as anything I wanted to log this problem here so that Apple will pay attention, but if anyone has any insights, then please let us know!

Can this be an example of planned obsolescence? The mid 2010 Mac mini was the last to feature an optical drive. It came with 10.6. Now 10.11, 5-1/2 years later, won't recognize optical drives. FIVE operating system updates, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, 10,10 and 10.11 have come on Mac minis with no optical drives. Is it time to replace a five year old computer with a new one?

This is not planned obsolescence. Someone told me he solved the problem by wiping the whole machine and starting over. What use to be called a clean install of the OS. He called it a "Nuke and Pave". I don't know it that is a real name, or just his name for the process.

But anyway he told me how to do it, but I am not able to do it because I am not experienced enough to understand what I am doing. And I do not have a physical backup at my home, or a drive that can be used. Nor should I have to do that.

Yes can anyone help - I have just upgraded to El Capitan but now cannot upload or listen to music cds (I have 000s and was slowly uploading them to iTunes - but the cds now whirr around and then get spat out. If I go to Applications I get the error message: "There was an initialisation error - A valid DVD drive could not be found [-70012]

Such a pain!!!!

All,

I've been having a issue which may be related to what some of you are experiencing. I have 6 different Mac's, and just realized that since updating to El Capitan, I am unable to see Audio CD's on any of the Mac's (The Finder does not show it mounted, and iTunes cannot access it). I have been working with Apple Support, and we believe it is a conflict with some 3rd part driver or program I have installed, but I have not been able to narrow it down. Apple has suggested a clean install, however, I haven't had time to try that on any of the machines yet.

What I have done is booted in Recovery mode, and the Audio CD is mounted, I can see it from the terminal if I "ls /Volumes". This does tend to confirm it may be a conflict with a driver or app I have installed.

I have found a workaround. If I disable System Integrity Protection (you need to do this from Recovery mode, and I would recommend Googling how to do it, as you should understand what you are turning on/off when you do it), my Audio CD's mount in normal boot mode, and are visible in iTunes. As I only rip CD's every couple of months, this workaround works for me. You could leave SIP off, but I would recommend reading to understand what that means, and what other consequences it might have.

If I get time to find out what the program or driver that is causing the conflict is, I will post that here as well.

Whatever 3rd party driver or program has been installed, everyone experiencing this problem has installed it. That sounds very unlikely.

This is very strange. I mean all the reports of problems. DVDs and audio CDs run fine on my system (a mid-2010 21.5 inch i-Mac running OS X 10.11.2). The audio CDs fire up i-Tunes.

I don't use my DVD drive often so I am late to the party but.... another non-functioning internal DVD drive here.

El Capitan 10.11.2

iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010)

Tried the SMC/PRAM resets and the lens cleaner trick, both to no avail.... anything else to try?

Further to my above comment - I have worked out that this is DVD related only... therefore cannot be a hardware issue.