Superdrive ejecting all disks inserted into it; any ideas?

[cicuz]

If the lens is dirty or something is wrong with the reader you will hear the drive spin up 3 or 4 times in an attempt to read the disc and it will take at least 20 seconds of trying to read before spitting it back out.

As for lens cleaning. One trick I read about is getting a thin and soft cotton cloth damp (not wet enough to drip) with rubbing alcohol. Wrap around a credit card and swipe pass the lens (you should not need to force it). The lens is in the left corner about 1 to 1 1/2 inches in. A couple of passes aught to clean it.

Dude, wow! Thank you so much, you made my day! I just wish I read this earlier..
Great tip, should be sticked
Thanks again!

 

[palmharbor]

.2 update to 10.8 is the problem

If the ejection is occurring immediately then the drive is faulty.

If the lens is dirty or something is wrong with the reader you will hear the drive spin up 3 or 4 times in an attempt to read the disc and it will take at least 20 seconds of trying to read before spitting it back out.

As for lens cleaning. One trick I read about is getting a thin and soft cotton cloth damp (not wet enough to drip) with rubbing alcohol. Wrap around a credit card and swipe pass the lens (you should not need to force it). The lens is in the left corner about 1 to 1 1/2 inches in. A couple of passes aught to clean it.

Many responses said this worked. Though it did not for me as the CD reader was faulty though DVD's still worked.

10.13.2012
I have a mac mini (my third in 4 years) under 10.8 outboard apple super drive working just fine. Now it rejects DVDs. Apple care says, reinstall
OS...but of course there is no longer a DVD you have to spend 6 hours
to download it from "the clouds"..Well, despite assurances from Apple Advisor, U get 10.8.2 Not a clean 10.8. By the way my superdrive
is a replacement as we tried that first. So now I am told they will
refer the issue to the "engineers" and they will get back to me in a few days.
I am not going to hold my breath.This update is a disaster and apple will take about 4 months to provide a new update. This is F____ked.

 

[nrajack]

Mid 2010 Mac Mini exhibiting the same problems mentioned here: insert disc, drive spins, disc spits out. That is the latest in what has happened. The whole (more or less) sad story:
Doing my weekly backups; I save off to an external hard drive and then also to dual layer dvd's. Always worked fine up until yesterday. Insert dual layer dvd, drag file folder to the disc icon on desktop, click burn give it a title, and we're off to the races.

Disc burns, verifies, done. I check to see if everything I wanted to be on the disc is there and it is. Eject disc. On a whim I put the disc back in the superdrive and Finder says the disc is blank. Eject disc and insert a commercial movie dvd - it plays fine. Insert a commercial music cd - it plays fine. Insert a dvd I burned some time back with data (an older backup) and it shows blank.

Bring down and hook up an older USB 2.0 HP dvd drive and it reads all discs fine - the backup I just burned, older dvd's I burned, movie dvd's music cd's etc. External drive also burns fine, burned a dvd as a test in that external drive. Burns fine but if I insert it in the superdrive it shows blank.

Now this morning if I insert dvd's in the superdrive it spits it out. So I Google the problem and find a few thing; thought I'd come over here and see what the folks here have to say. Consensus is dirty laser lens. So I investigate different cleaner discs and a number of them say not for use in slot loading drives like a superdrive. Not too nuts about trying the credit card/cloth thing and worried that a can of air might force the laser assembly out of alignment not too mention some cans of air have freon in them. Suggestions? I could leave the external burner hooked up but would rather just use the superdrive in the Mini.

Thanks for any help and hope all stay safe from Hurricane Sandy (I live in NJ).

 

[velocityg4]

10.13.2012
I have a mac mini (my third in 4 years) under 10.8 outboard apple super drive working just fine. Now it rejects DVDs. Apple care says, reinstall
OS...but of course there is no longer a DVD you have to spend 6 hours
to download it from "the clouds"..Well, despite assurances from Apple Advisor, U get 10.8.2 Not a clean 10.8. By the way my superdrive
is a replacement as we tried that first. So now I am told they will
refer the issue to the "engineers" and they will get back to me in a few days.
I am not going to hold my breath.This update is a disaster and apple will take about 4 months to provide a new update. This is F____ked.

It could be that the DVD reader has simply failed. Just because it is a new replacement doesn't guarantee it will work. It could have a manufacturing defect that caused quick failure. It does happen.

If you have an old Snow Leopard DVD or a Win Vista/7/8 DVD you can try booting off them by holding the option key while booting to verify. Insert the disc right before the computer restarts so it doesn't have time to eject it before reboot.

Mid 2010 Mac Mini exhibiting the same problems mentioned here: insert disc, drive spins, disc spits out. That is the latest in what has happened. The whole (more or less) sad story:
Doing my weekly backups; I save off to an external hard drive and then also to dual layer dvd's. Always worked fine up until yesterday. Insert dual layer dvd, drag file folder to the disc icon on desktop, click burn give it a title, and we're off to the races.

Disc burns, verifies, done. I check to see if everything I wanted to be on the disc is there and it is. Eject disc. On a whim I put the disc back in the superdrive and Finder says the disc is blank. Eject disc and insert a commercial movie dvd - it plays fine. Insert a commercial music cd - it plays fine. Insert a dvd I burned some time back with data (an older backup) and it shows blank.

Bring down and hook up an older USB 2.0 HP dvd drive and it reads all discs fine - the backup I just burned, older dvd's I burned, movie dvd's music cd's etc. External drive also burns fine, burned a dvd as a test in that external drive. Burns fine but if I insert it in the superdrive it shows blank.

Now this morning if I insert dvd's in the superdrive it spits it out. So I Google the problem and find a few thing; thought I'd come over here and see what the folks here have to say. Consensus is dirty laser lens. So I investigate different cleaner discs and a number of them say not for use in slot loading drives like a superdrive. Not too nuts about trying the credit card/cloth thing and worried that a can of air might force the laser assembly out of alignment not too mention some cans of air have freon in them. Suggestions? I could leave the external burner hooked up but would rather just use the superdrive in the Mini.

Thanks for any help and hope all stay safe from Hurricane Sandy (I live in NJ).

The only other option would be to disassemble the drive and clean the lens with a cloth dampened with alchohol by hand. If you are very careful opening it you can do it this way. The credit card option is really just a less daunting and time consuming technique but not as precise.

Really your only option is to clean the lens and hope it works or replace the faulty drive. The only way you are going to clean it is by something actually touching the lens. Think of it like a windows. You can not clean a windows without a cleaning agent being applied and something object touching the windows to remove the agent and grime.

As it stands the drive is useless, so what have you got to lose?