Q: El Capitan suddenly not recognizing optical drive
I have a MacBook Air running El Capitan, purchased 3/2016. I purchased the optical drive at the same time I purchased the computer. I have been using the external drive to burn DVD's and CD's. All worked well until I plugged the optical drive in yesterday. I opened iTunes, plugged in the drive, inserted a cd, and the window showing I had inserted the cd never popped up. The finder doesn't show the drive, even though I have checked in preferences for it to show. The only way I could safely eject the cd was by going to disk utility where I could see the drive and the cd, and eject it.
I checked to make sure that the drive still operates by inserting both a DVD or CD on the optical drive. Both will play properly, but still have to return to the disk utility in order to eject them since the drive doesn't show up anywhere else.
With iTunes running, and the drive plugged in with a blank CD inserted, the "Burn playlist to disk" is grayed out, since the computer isn't recognizing the drive.
What can I do to get the computer/El Capitan to recognize the drive again?
MBA, Mac OS X (10.6.1)
Posted on Aug 8, 2016 5:54 AM

