El Capitan killed DVD drive

I'm not sure if this is the answer to the question I'm guessing you're asking --- "How/where did you find this solution? I'd like to try it, if you wouldn't mind sharing".

I am using a Summer 2010 Mac Pro tower Running Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X.

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-fix-os-x-el-capitans-annoyances-1733836821

This is the first website I found that had an actual solution to the issue after entering the search phrase: el captitan dvd usb 3.0 not working, or something similar.

I can no longer find the YouTube video that I did the screen capture from

I would advise installing the drivers for any external devices and added cards first in El Capitan before using the csrutil command.

Once I booted into the Recovery Environment (for the first time) I had to hunt around in Utilities to find the Terminal Application. Do not confuse Utilities with Disk Utilities.

For the purpose of getting El Capitan to recognize your USB, USB-2, USB-3, and certain legacy devices you won’t successfully use the crsutil disable and crsutil enable commands when the Mac is booted up in the usual way. You want to boot up in the Recovery environment first then use the csrutil command.

Then to check how your devices behave boot up in the usual way.

After they (hopefully) check out ok then go back into the Recovery Environment and type csrutil enable.

Boot up again in the usual way and check to see if your devices are still working.

To check the present status of crsutil type crsutil status.

Note: When you do a normal bootup the Terminal application can be found as follows: Open Finder > Applications Folder > Utilities Folder > Terminal.

Note: If you don’t enable the System Integrity Protection Feature then you leave El Capitan open to all manner of hackers and viruses.

Not able to fully confirm whether this is the fix but it worked for me. After upgrading to El Cap I had the same problem of the Super Drive's and external drives on all my machines not working properly (some would mount, some wouldn't, none of them would play, all drives working just fine before the update (MacBook Pro, 3 iMac's and 1 mac Mini)). I'm currently based in the UK (DVD region 2) but used to be in the USA (region 1). I switched my region back to region 1 and all is now working fine again. Could be that there is a bug in the region setting and El Cap for those outside region 1.

Hope it helps!

Nice idea.... doesn't work for me... 😟

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid-2012) with internal Superdrive

This happened to me when I updated the above machine from 10.11.2 to 10.11.3 on 19 Jan 2016.

Two days before updating I had no problem reading DVDs. Two days after updating I tried to read a DVD again - it did not appear in Finder or Disk Utility and DVD Player did not open automatically when it was inserted, as it should do according to the preference I had set in the CDs & DVDs pane in System Preferences. The disk just spun a few times and then ejected. CDs still work as normal however and iTunes opens when I insert a CD.

I've tried all of the solutions posted here, none of which worked, including reverting to a 10.11.2 Time Machine backup and even a clean install of Yosemite.

In the case of the csrutil disable solution, when I boot into the Recovery Volume and type in that command in Terminal I get the response command not found. However, if I boot as normal and type csrutil status in Terminal, the response is enabled. Other people have encountered a similar problem and various solutions have been posted elsewhere. However, I've spent enough time on the DVD problem I now have with this machine and can't be bothered trying them.

Fortunately, I also have a 2009 15" MBP running 10.11.2, which still reads DVDs perfectly well, so I'll use that when I need to read DVDs and I won't be updating it from 10.11.2 in the foreseeable future.

My husband waited a long time to upgrade to El Capitan. He finally did last week and is having the same problem; his Macbook Pro is not recognizing the Apple CD/DVD drive. It has been looked at by an Apple employee during a Genius appointment. He couldn't solve it so suggested he re-install El Capitan. He did that over the phone with Apple Care, which did not solve the problem. The Apple Care guy suggested he take it back to the Genius Bar. I really hope that Apple sees this thread and solves this problem. Also, neither the Genius Bar guy or the Apple Care guy had any idea that this was an ongoing problem; they thought that it was unique to my husband's computer.

I just wanted to add to this comment. When I called Apple care they also said they were not aware of the problem. They were not able to help over the phone. I had an appointment at the Genius bar also on Feb 12.

The genius said she had never seen this problem when I told her what I was there for. I mentioned that several people were having the same problem and talking about it in apple communities. The genius helping me made the comment that a lot of the problems brought up in communities are not really problems.

The first thing she did was take a can of of air and sprayed it into the internal slot. Then she inserted a blank DVD into the slot. It popped up on the desk top like it is supposed to, so she said it is working.

It still would not play what I thought was a DVD I received in the mail from TurboTax. (it turned out it was a CD). She said it was scrachted, and that the lens is very sensitive.

Any way she said it was working. She only had the blank DVD. (I would have thought the store had DVDs they could use.) So I took my IMAC home and found it still not working.

Went back later that day with three DVD's.

She connected the store's super computer to mine, which has a clean version of El Capitan. No other apps or anything from my computer. It still would not work. So she thinks it needs a new DVD drive.

Since she said that was a clean version of El Capitan, I saw no reason to purge the computer and start over, or attempt any of the other suggestions that have been posted on this thread.

Of course I don't agree, because it worked fine with Yosemite, and I never moved the computer until I took it to the Apple store.

My point is no one from Apple monitors the support community, or they don't believe what they see, or it doesn't get passed on to the genius' until it becomes official. (maybe when they are able to solve the problem).

Have a Mid-2009 Macbook Pro 15 inch standard issue.

Upgraded to El Capitan December 2015. No probelm with DVD drive reading or writing DVDs.

However, updated system software to 10.11.3 last night and found this morning the DVD drive not working. Zapped the PRAM. Still not working.

No older DVDs worked - commercial or home authored.

Tried a new blank DVD. It mounted OK.

Retried other DVDs. They worked.

Go figure!

I just tried this as well with my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013). I was not expecting to run into issues but my blu ray/ DVD burner is not recognized. Apple needs to have a fix for this, this is ridiculous.

This Solved my problem. Have late 2015 Imac with preinstalled El Capitan using Samsung external DVD writer. As soon as I ran CSRutil disable it instanly recognised my drive and everything worked.

Lee thanks for the post it sound like we have a similar problem, but many months apart.

I am having same issue. I use my slot loading super drive (see specs and model information below) to review learning DVD’s. I had no issues in Yosemite viewing my DVD’s. I upgraded to El Capitan about 2 months ago and tonight decided to review some DVD’s and behold “Insert disc (which, yes, works find in other DVD drives) and it spins it around back and forth for awhile and then spits it out”. Exact Same issue! I have read this entire thread and tried all of the “fixes” listed to no avail.

I am pretty sure the Computer knows it had a super drive, but it will not spin up. The disc never shows up in a finder window (Side bar view). In addition, when refreshing the system report window for my DVD drive, the window will not reload until the disc is spit back out. Furthermore, under about this Mac > storage the window shows the DVD drive is able to write in the following formats:

CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-R DL, DVD+R DL

When I insert a Disc I can hear what sounds like the fans speed up, the “back and forth” sounds the optical drive usually makes before it spins up, and then nothing but an occasional “back or forth” movement for about 30 seconds. It is as if the Operating System is waiting on the hardware, but nothing happens. Could this be a driver issue of some kind?

This may be a bad optical drive. I will continue to try other endeavors for a few weeks. I do have a sneaky suspicion that this “could be” a software issue because of all the people I found (besides here) that say their optical drives are acting odd, or just not working after upgrading to El Capitan. Again, after I upgraded, two months ago, I too all of a sudden have a bad Super Drive? Odd, but my computer is old.

Just to be fair I have been using Macintosh since my Macintosh Plus (1990 came out in 88 couldn’t afford it new) and have seen Apples best and worst times. I also notice that with their recent (what 15 years now? I mean PPC blue and white came out in 99) influx of users (not power users) there are some really odd things people have tried. I did not try stuffing a credit/business card wrapped in a lens cloth into my slot loading optical drive as I know where the laser is and don’t want to bend any of the components on my specific iMac Model. If it worked for you great, I won’t do it.

I do not mean to put anyone down; that is not my point. My point is be careful of the amount misinformation on the internet. Like Windows back in the day there seems to be an expert on every corner. What is worse is all the websites that have popped up because of Apples popularity (no credentials for Mac stuff) running articles that can be detrimental to your system. Again, I just googled Superdrive Issues, among other things and saw this was an issues with Yosemite too.

I hope it is just software, but I bet a new external optical drive may be the cheapest scenario that or, have this one repaired (cha ching!), or completely wipe my system to see if this is software related. I however have not exhausted all avenues yet.

Other things I have tried:

Used a cleaning disk. (did not work)

Used compressed air (did not work)

Reset SMU and PRAM (4 times, did not work)

Tried multiple discs (Blank DVD’s, CD’s, Movie DVD’s)

Booting into a TechTool ProtoGo Yosemite USB drive (did not recognize a disc maybe because I did not have a DVD application installed. Will try another disc at a later date)

Booting into other user accounts (did not work)

Ran recovery, and tried disabling SIP (did not work)

Tried Capturing the Drive in VirtualBox (did not work)

Removed Plist, cleaned cashes, etc. ran maintenance scripts, reset permissions after disabling SIP, and after enabling SIP (nope, not working still).

Unrelated, or is it: Yes Photoshop CS6's intermittent crashing after installing El Capitan is the reason I found this issue tonight. LOL!

Model Name: iMac (27-inch, Late 2009)

Model Identifier: iMac11,1

Processor Name: Intel Core i7

Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 4

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 8 MB

Memory: 12 GB

Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s

Boot ROM Version: IM111.0034.B04

SMC Version (system): 1.54f36

HL-DT-ST DVDRW GA11N:

Firmware Revision: KA19

Interconnect: ATAPI

Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)

Cache: 2048 KB

Reads DVD: Yes

CD-Write: -R, -RW

DVD-Write: -R, -R DL, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW

Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO

Media: To show the available burn speeds, insert a disc and choose File > Refresh Information

Just wanted to say the csrutil disable solution also worked for me. mid 2011 macbook air with a coolead blu ray external drive

Ah duh, the issue is widespread, and constant, and I'm getting so tired of dealing with this quarterly disappearance of my internal DVD drive on my early 2009 iMac. It has been an issue for my machine for 4-5 years now. Reset this, unplug that, reinstall - try that one with no drive - push D, push Option-D, blah blah blah. Oh to have my clamshell back again. I don't know why I'm so stubborn, I should just go buy an external DVD drive - goodness knows if I buy a new iMac I'm going to have to do that anyway, since Ma Apple has banished them internally. Oh, and while I'm 'ranting", I'm down-grading my cloud storage, because iCloud's proprietary system doesn't allow me to back up my WordPress site to storage there, which, come to think of it, I wouldn't want, anyway, as I am just recovering from the hostage crisis that is iCloud Photos storage. Maybe it's time to rethink this whole Apple cult/brand loyalty thing overall. It was a fine affair but now it's over.

I wanted to do this but found out that the external Apple SuperDrive is restricted to 2012 and later Macs and will not work with a mid 2011 iMac or earlier. Furthermore, the external SuperDrive will not work if there is an internal SuperDrive installed. I'll have to replace the drive at the cost of parts and labor since my AppleCare has run out.

Mine is an internal drive on an iMac...also now unrecognized after El Capitan upgrade.

My built in optical drive seemed to disappear when I installed el Capitan on my 2011 MBP 15" - I reset the SMC and found that the drive now appears, mounts and works OK once I have inserted a disc. Prior to that there's no sign of it and "system report" still doesn't show the hardware... but when I insert a disc it mounts and suddenly the drive appears in diskutil. Once I eject the disk the whole drive disappears again.