Comments on: The ultimate guide to ejecting a stuck disc from Mac SuperDrive

By: Tracy

Tracy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:37:10 +0000

Credit card with Tuck Tape worked for me. Nothing else will cuz my computer has no menus….just a grey sceen with a flashing picture of a file folder with a question mark in the middle.

When I looked up solutions, I found it told me to reboot from the original disk that came with the computer and that is when it got stuck.

I can’t win. LOL

Advice….. if you have warrenty like I do then just take it in. Don’t play with it.

Stressed Out,

Tracy

By: Daiki

Daiki — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:45:42 +0000

The tilt and shake might is dangerous, and don’t drop it!

By: Azfar

Azfar — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:26:39 +0000

The terminal command did the tick for me when the drive wouldn’t accept a disk after something went wrong whilst ejecting a DVD!!

By: Scotscowgirl

Scotscowgirl — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:19:22 +0000

Credit card with double sided sticky tape finally did it after trying everything else, phew!

By: Saugata

Saugata — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:33:05 +0000

Ant, you are a genius – this is relevant even after 2 years. I just managed to eject a disk with the terminal utilities command.

Thanks!

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:45:00 +0000

AHHH, how sweet the taste of success, the huge flood of relief, that came when my DVD finally popped out after literally HOURS of trying unsuccessfully to get it out. For me, what finally did the trick was the terminal command. But it didn’t work the first time, I had to do it twice. Thanks so much for the wonderful site and helpful advice.

NOW…do I tempt fate again and risk playing this DVD, or the other new DVD I just bought, again? It was the VERY first DVD I ever put into my new MacBook Pro… I love this laptop, but never ever have had a problem like this over the years with multiple PC desktops and laptops. Why in the world would you build a DVD drive that didn’t have the typical paperclip manual eject method?!? I get that would requires a tray that come out of the side of the laptop, not just a cool slot like the mac has, but after this experience, I’d sacrifice that cool factor in a heartbeat. Good luck all!

By: Sharon

Sharon — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 15:37:44 +0000

quote//Seems the men on here are as stupid as the woman. Why would you put a MINI CD in a MAC. Unless they are tray loaded? They will not go in. You should have noticed it when the drive does not grab the disk. That means you would have had to push it in. Thats the stupidest thing i have ever heard. The other thing i have not heard on here is how did you guys get the disk stuck in the first place. I cant see all of you putting in MINI CD’s. These are fine example of people that don’t read, or look up information about there computers. LMAO

I don’t know about the mini cd’s but you obviously don’t know about the iMac slot loading drives or maybe not computers at all. TOTALLY Rude! and maybe need a life.

My brother just brought me his iMac with a stuck cd and I used the blank plastic disk to get the cd out of there by hitting eject with the dummy cd just under & as the disk tried to eject, I pushed up and it spit the stuck cd out far enough for me to grasp.

The idea of the disk not being pushed up off the spindle has me thinking the mechanism isn’t working. I now have the computer apart and finally to the cd drive. I believe I will work on fixing the root of the problem as I really don’t like clutter of having another piece of equipment. :D

By: Elaine

Elaine — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:08:37 +0000

I’ve had a CD stuck in my iMac for three days. Got online and tried everything mentioned. Nothing worked, even those that said 100% guaranteed to work. I was getting ready to take my iMac to the shop when something happened by accident. Attached to my iMac is an external blu-ray drive. I put a blu-ray in it and it had some gunk on it, so it wouldn’t show up on my desktop and the green light went off. I tried to eject it and instead of ejecting that one, it ejected the CD that had been stuck in my internal drive for three days. After cleaning off the blu-ray, both drives are working fine now. So, in the future if a CD gets stuck again, I will just turn off my external drive and eject the CD from the internal drive. You may not have that option. If you do, try it.

By: Capt Haddack

Capt Haddack — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:42:04 +0000

Terminal Command worked for me, fantastic new. No trip to the Apple Store!!

By: Peter Sysko

Peter Sysko — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:41:27 +0000

Tried everything here, including the mailing label sticky idea from a commenter. Could not get the tape to stick. So basically I used an Exacto blade (precision craft knife) to slice the border of each of those annoying rubber stoppers, carving through about 75& of those sheilds, removed them like a surgeon (its not that hard, just takes care and focus) – this way the drive is open and those rubber or felt sheilds (which were impossible to clean) are removed for good. good riddens too. :)

By: David Chameli

David Chameli — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:05:34 +0000

The only thing that works for me was the left button at start-up. THANK YOU for the advice. The disc has spun so long that it was warm!

By: Cassidy

Cassidy — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 02:22:27 +0000

Disk interupt worked great, the disk spinning and hitting my card kinda freaked me out, But disk is out HOORAY!!!,
Thank you

By: jaro

jaro — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:20:24 +0000

after trying to watch a training video it go stuck in my macB and i tried a few things without luck then i came across this forum , PUSHED IN THE A CREDIT CARD SIZE CARD WHILE I REBOOTED , GIGGLED IT A FEW TIMES , PRESSED THE EJECT BUTTON A FEW TIMES, WHALLAAA!!!!!!! ITS OUT . Thanks -you saved me a trip and a humble donation to the MacDads

By: Den

Den — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:03:02 +0000

Thanks for the tip. I tried the Disrupt the spin technique -and it worked! :D So far my SuperDrive is still ok. I’m not sure about the CD that got stucked though…

By: ERic

ERic — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:27:15 +0000

duct tape, a piece of paper and a credit card haha.

By: Rick

Rick — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:41:18 +0000

I’ve had this now with three different Macs. On my latest one I have broke the mechanism trying to wriggle the disc out with two credit cards. Apple need to sort this design flaw out. It’s not on at all. When you pay premium prices you expect premium product. Joke!!!

By: Beth Concepcion

Beth Concepcion — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 18:37:51 +0000

Thank You.
I was able to take out the stuck disk out of my mac without going through the apple technical support. My warranty expired and I could imagine how much they would charge me.

By: Arlene Cosand

Arlene Cosand — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 06:48:13 +0000

I had just about given up but tried the Disk Utility procedure and, although the disc did not eject fully, it did so with just an edge emerging from the slot so that I could grasp it with a long pair of tweezers. I’m not sure I will insert that same disc again but it is out for now.

By: Neeraye

Neeraye — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:08:39 +0000

Thank you! I’m not very tech-savvy, so I didn’t know you had to HOLD the eject key for few seconds. Thank you! :)

By: Christopher

Christopher — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 23:50:27 +0000

If anyone has a copy of TOAST installed, try using the eject option on that. I used to get discs stuck in my old Core 2 Duo iMac all the time, and regardless of what program I was using, I would simply open Toast and hit eject and it would pop out every time.

By: Roxy

Roxy — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 02:52:12 +0000

AND DAVID!!! (i think you were first to post?) and everyone else, THANKS SO SO SO MUCH! WORDS ARE NOT ENOUGH!

By: Roxy

Roxy — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 02:45:45 +0000

ok… I will prob be the only adult to openly admit that I pushed two cds into a one disc drive while i was talking on the telephone(no, it was not a two year old)… Panic would be an understatement as the second cd rom was video for a presentation at work.. in which i had the only hard copy… Yes I am a moron… non the less…

THE MAILING LABEL AND CREDIT CARD WORKED EASY AS ONE TWO THREE BOTH CDS JUST SLIPPED OUT…(DONT BE NERVOUS TO REALLY PUSH YOUR CREDIT CARD INTO THE SLOT, ITS NOT THE TIME TO BE GENTLE!)

I do not usually post but this was a special occasion because seriously you feel stupid using a credit card and tape on some fancy mac… but it works… and you can’t feel stupider than getting two cds stuck in the drive at once.

GOOD LUCK TO YA ALL!

By: kate

kate — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 02:41:59 +0000

Thank you! I tried the earlier suggestions many times over, but the gently tilting and shaking while rebooting finally did the trick.

By: adatwill

adatwill — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 04:51:20 +0000

Wow!! I tried all of them and I have to say the one that worked best for me was the old business card. I just bought the MacBook Air with the external super drive. I was really nervous and this was the best tip!!!!

Thank you, thank you!!!