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My internal superdrive no longer works on my Macbook after upgrading to El Capitan. CD/DVD disks won't load and the eject button does nothing. The drive worked fine before the OS X upgrade (10.11.2).
Reinstall El Capitan Without Erasing the Drive
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility and press the Continue button. After Disk Utility loads select the indented Macintosh HD entry from the the left side list. Click on the First Aid button in the toolbar. Wait until the operation completes, then quit Disk Utility and return to the main menu.
Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless and more reliable.
Thanks for the prompt suggestion Kappy. I just finished reloading El Capitan but the drive is still not responding with either CDs or DVDs when inserted. As before, the Superdrive shows under About My Mac, Storage and also under the system report, hardware, Sata, Serial-ATA Device Tree - HL-DT-ST DVDRW GS@#N, but nothing happens when inserting a disk...
Why does everyone suggest to reinstall the OS, same as Apple - hotline?
I have two MBP both upgrade to 10.11.2 & both have same behavior...
Is it not visible that the is a huge issue with USB devices since 10.11.2? Why does Apple not offer a patch? This kills the access to a file vault encrypted drive & is not a small issue!!
Also, when running the disk utility, the CD drive does not show up under the drives listed. Not sure, but I thought that the disk utility used to also show the CD drive.
I have a similar problem with my external superdrive in 10.11.2:
CD/DVDs cannot be inserted when the drive is plugged in while system is running. Rebooting with the Superdrive connected solves this, but the eject key on the keyboard does not eject the media in the drive. CD/DVDs are ejected when they are dragged to the trash or after right click -> eject. Other funcions of the eject key on the keyboards are working (e.g. ctrl + eject).
So I exclued hardware failuers related to any of the devices and after starting from my bootable backup of 10.10.5 with an exxternal drive the problems disappear. So for me it's an OS related problem of El Capitan.
Talking to the apple support they advised a reinstall that changed nothing at all.
Another post suggested to use the command "drutil eject" in the terminal and do an SMC reset afterwards but I was not able to test this. Maybe this solves the problem for you.
Otherwise I am hoping for 10.11.3 to fix it.
Yes this is apple hotline suggestions but I agree not logical & does also not affect it...
Yes, I had tried the command "drutil eject" in the terminal mode and also an SMC reset before trying the OS X rebuild. Nothing resolved the issue.
I am experiencing the same problem with my internal optical drive. There seems to be a major bug in El Capitan. I have an Early 2011 15" Macbook Pro. After upgrading to El Capitan from Yosemite, audio CD's and data CD's are no longer readable by the internal optical drive (Superdrive); however it will load DVD's. When an audio or data disk is inserted in the drive, the system responds with the following alert: "THE DISK YOU INSERTED WAS NOT READABLE BY THIS COMPUTER" followed by an IGNORE and EJECT button. If I click on either button, the alert goes away and nothing further happens. I cannot eject the disk using the Keyboard Button, Finder or Disk Utility. In order to eject the disk, I have to use Terminal with the command "drutil eject". I am sure the optical drive is not defective because it works fine in a Parallels Windows 10 virtual machine as well as Win 7 in Bootcamp. It is ironic and frustrating that the only way to play a CD using iTunes on my Macbook is by using Windows!! I've tried resetting the SMC, PRAM, permissions, and applied the <string>mbasd=1</string> technique but nothing has changed. I would consider a clean install of El Capitan but don't want to go through the hassle if it won't solve the problem. Alternatively, I may reinstall Yosemite unless someone has a better solution.
Honestly Iam shocked how apple can release a new OS, with such a fundamental issue on USB component that even kills access to file vault drives!
Hope there is soon a bugfix and in future a better / longer testing phase, not like Microsoft to use customer as beta tester!
Joern Ahrens is right. Not only is the problem on USB components but even internal components. It seems like Apple has adopted the old Microsoft paradigm of releasing buggy OS and letting customers deal with it. Or maybe the strategy is to give away free OS upgrades that do not fully work on older equipment thereby hoping customers will buy new. Does anyone from Apple ever read and respond to these posts?
Joern Ahrens wrote:
Why does everyone suggest to reinstall the OS, same as Apple - hotline?
I have two MBP both upgrade to 10.11.2 & both have same behavior...
Is it not visible that the is a huge issue with USB devices since 10.11.2? Why does Apple not offer a patch? This kills the access to a file vault encrypted drive & is not a small issue!!
I believe the OP had an internal superdrive - that is NOT a USB device, it is a SATA device.
As to reinstalling, if you just reapply the update, or if you install and reimport your stuff from Time Machine, this is not the same as a clean install. A clean install is likely to solve the issue. FWIW I have had no trouble with either the internal superdrive of my iMac, or with the former superdrive of my MBP installed in USB case.
It sounds like you did a clean install of El Cap rather than an update. If a clean install fixes the problem, Apple needs to correct the upgrade process or let people know that a clean install is required for a fully functional system.
aerodyne wrote:
It sounds like you did a clean install of El Cap rather than an update. If a clean install fixes the problem, Apple needs to correct the upgrade process or let people know that a clean install is required for a fully functional system.
Actually, no. I did an update from Yosemite to El Capitan, and it is working fine.
It all depends on what people had in their systems before the update.
Obviously a clean install is much less likely to have issues, but it is not as if every updated system fails.
Good point. It is amazing that these systems work as well as they do given all the complexities and variations that users put them though. Nevertheless, I was hoping that OS X would be more resilient to corruption. Requiring a clean install to repair what is probably an easy fix, if I knew where to look, is reminiscent of Windows and its easily corrupted Registry. As you suggest, a clean install will probably take care of the problem.
My internal superdrive no longer works after upgrading to El Capitan. CD/DVD disks won't load and the eject button does nothing. The drive worked fine before the OS X upgrade (10.11.2).
