Anyone know how to force a MacBook (13" white) to eject a DVD?
I’ve just burned a load of video clips onto a DVD and the BBC man is coming round in an hour to collect them. But the MacBook won’t eject the disk! It makes some mechanical noises but disk doesn’t come out!
ARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!
Short of smashing the laptop open (I feel like it), does anyone know any tricks for getting disks out? I can’t see any mini pin holes or anything.
Thanks Heather and Robert, sadly no luck - BBC now been and gone, but at least they have the MiniDV footage on tape!
To this day I do not understand why Apple build laptops without a failsafe mechanical ejection system. You just know it’s a mechanism waiting to go wrong…
To this day I do not understand why Apple build laptops without a failsafe mechanical ejection system. You just know it’s a mechanism waiting to go wrong…
I wonder, too. For my part, the held button at restart has usually worked.
Thanks Heather! I read that and the terminal+reboot worked! The disk looked a bit scratched, probably because I’d previously been working a business card in there to try and release whatever was blocking it. But the disk was readable ok, so not damaged.
Too late for the BBC but they should have enough footage anyway direct from my tapes.
Useful tip to know, but one irate Apple user here still shaking head at drive design…!
Useful tip to know, but one irate Apple user here still shaking head at drive design…!
True, but I rather think optical drives are going the way of the floppy drive. I so rarely need to burn media these days, and most software is now downloaded rather than installed from a disc.
You’re right in a way, Heather, it’s going that way.
But CD/DVD aren’t just for software and they’re still very useful for giving people files in a cheap and (largely) reliable media format that can be physically stored outside of memory. (backups, archives, images…). Burning a disk with 1.6gb of data to hand to a friend is a lot quicker than trying to upload 1.6gb of data to some file server somewhere, with a similar download process for the receiver. I’d rather save my broadband limit for something else!
And if Apple are still building machines with the drive…well, it’s still a current format.
