Comments on: Snow Leopard Oddity: Optical Drive Opens and Closes Too Fast

By: Aaron Meurer

Aaron Meurer — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:45:43 +0000

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.

By: kirk

kirk — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:38:04 +0000

Mine closed before after about five minutes. That happened on the internal in my Mac Pro as well.

By: Brian N.

Brian N. — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:35:07 +0000

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.

By: Barbarossa

Barbarossa — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:19:52 +0000

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.

By: Brian N.

Brian N. — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:42:04 +0000

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.

By: Louis Wheeler

Louis Wheeler — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:08:21 +0000

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.

By: Barbarossa

Barbarossa — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:51:40 +0000

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.