external usb dvd drive not recognised when a blank dvd-r is inserted. Is ok with cd-r though

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Level 1

4 points

external usb dvd drive not recognised when a blank dvd-r is inserted. Is ok with cd-r though

My Asus usb cd/dvd drive used to work fine on my iMac, but now it recognises when I insert a blank cd-r and the icon for the drive appears on the desktop. However if I insert a blank dvd-r the drive spins up but nothing else happens. If I open finder the drive does not appear. if I open sys preferences and select CDs &DVDs open finder is selected for blank dvd. If I open disk utility, in the left pane is Asus SDRW-08D2S-U media. but in capacity is Zero KB. This happens for a whole stack of 25 dvd-r blank discs. nb. the icon for the drive still not appearing on the desktop and I cannot eject the DVDs. Have to insert a probe into the little hole in the drive to get the disc out. System details - iMac 27 inch late 2013 3.4 ghz intel core i5 16gb 1600 memory DDR3 running mac OS Sierra version 10.12.3

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Mar 3, 2017 1:37 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,782 points

Mar 3, 2017 12:10 PM in response to hamousher

Good news that the drive itself is okay. Then it would either be really cheap writable DVDs (yup, there's good ones and worthless ones), or the drive doesn't support the type of DVD you're using.

The latter isn't likely as almost any decent drive supports all of the various types of writable disks you can buy. Hold down the Option key and click on the Apple at the top left of the screen. Choose System Information. Click on the Disk Burning category at the left, then choose your drive at the right. At the bottom, it will show all of the specs for that drive, and what kinds of disks it supports. Here's my internal DVD drive:

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

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Answer 2

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,782 points

Mar 3, 2017 6:51 AM in response to hamousher

If no DVD works in the drive, then it's likely the laser for DVDs has died. Try various commercial disks. Such as music CDs and purchased software on CD. Then try movie DVDs and purchased software on DVDs. If all CDs work, but no DVDs do, then the laser is out.

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Answer 3

hamousher Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 3, 2017 11:48 AM in response to hamousher

Hi Kurt, thanks for the reply. I have been very busy with another pc, anyway just tried a pre recorded dvd and it works just fine, still no joy with the blank DVDs. So now another pc is running I've tried the DVDs in its drive and the same thing, Drive does appear but it keeps ejecting the media with the message " insert a blank disc" so does this mean the stack of DVD-r are all u/s?

Regards David

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