Snow Leopard Oddity: Optical Drive Opens and Closes Too Fast
While I haven’t suffered from many problems since installing Snow Leopard two months ago, there’s one thing that’s happening that is annoying, and for which I can’t find any kind of fix. My main computer is my Mac mini, and I’ve got an external CD drive (CD only; not DVD) for ripping CDs. As I buy a lot of CDs, it’s useful to have this drive, which is much faster than then internal SuperDrive. (If you haven’t followed previous episodes, you can read about my Mac mini experience here and in other articles linked from that one.)
So what’s happening with the drive is strange. When I open it to put a CD in or take it out after ripping, it closes immediately. I have barely one second to grab the CD and remove it without getting it stuck in the mechanism. Checking on Apple’s forums, I found a number of people with optical disc problems, but for them it’s usually that the discs don’t mount, or spin and eject without mounting. I’m sure this is a Snow Leopard-related problem, as I didn’t have this issue with the drive – which is relatively new – under Leopard. Have any of you seen a similar problem?
It’s difficult to find people with the same issue, at least with external drives, because, well, most people simply don’t have external optical drives. And most Macs – other than the Mac Pro – have slot-loading drives, which, after ejecting a disc, can’t grab it and pull it back in.
Update: The 10.6.2 update seems to have fixed this problem.
Posted: 10/29/2009 by kirk | Filed under: Apple & Mac OS X | 7 Comments »
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The only time I have had this happen on my old G5 is when the Eject hangs and I push the Eject button again. When the
Eject “takes” it recognizes two clicks and then closes immediately after opening.
It sounds as if somewhere in Snow Leopard there is something sending a double click or a repeated click. You might try using a different Key for ejection, or perhaps a different Key Command. This might narrow down the problem.
It may take some looking for, but all these parameters are in a flat file that you can access through the terminal application. I just looked at Apple’s open source page.
http://opensource.apple.com/release/mac-os-x-1061/
Another location is at MacOSX Hints
http://www.macosxhints.com/
Happy researching.
I have a LaCie external DVD burner on my Mac Mini. Ever since installing 10.6, if I leave the drive open, it will close the disc tray randomly. It seems to be tied to the screensaver, but I’m not sure yet. Annoying if I have a disc sitting in the tray that I’ve ejected as it will remount the disc in about 5-10 minutes. I’ve had to turn off the “open DVD player” preference in the “CDs and DVDs” Pref Pane.
It’s not just your Drive. I have found that almost ANY optical drive will close if left open long enough – in this case 5 or 10 minutes seems lon enough.
Nope. This definitely did not happen with Leopard and before. I have been leaving discs in the external optic drive for years and it never closed spontaneously. Definitely a Snow Leopard issue.
Mine closed before after about five minutes. That happened on the internal in my Mac Pro as well.
This sounds like it might be a feature. After all, it is not a good idea to leave your drive open, as they can easily break off if you bump into them.