For the past month my iMac's (2007, 10.6.2l) CD/DVD drive has complained a lot. Slide in a disc and after a few clicks it slides back out. Try another disk, reads with no trouble. Next - won't read it. Varies from commercial music media to blank disks that I want to use to backup files.

Today when attempting to burn onto a DVD an error message appeared - first one ever - that advised the "disc can't be burned because the device failed to calibrate the laser power for the media".

It's $300+ and several days to repair so I'm wondering if there's a utility or test I can run to reset-recalibrate the unit, or am I just stuck with getting a new one?

Thanks in advance.

Dave

Optical drives are all basically POS. Unless it's the extremely rare instance that the laser has a bit of dirt on it yours is probably bad. You could get an external drive for a lot cheaper than having the internal replaced.

I always recommend anyone with a laptop or iMac that plans on frequently using the optical drive to get Apple Care, or an external drive, because the internal will break long before anything else does.

Yep..optical drives usually ar the first thing to go...


Start here..

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/optical-drives/


I wouldn't select the first one since it's bus-powered. I like my drive to have it's own power.

Yep

Now mine won't eject the CD and with iMacs theres no pin hole to stick a paper clip in .
Looks like I am in the market for a external too .

Even if you hold the mouse clicker down when you reboot?

Didn't try that , left or right button or does it matter

Won't eject via Finder or dragging to trash , just makes a sound like it is trying to eject .

Wow, so it shows up on the desktop? If so your drive is probably just misaligned. Possibly a business card on one side of the slot or the other to guide it out would do it.

Unless it's a disc with a label that has come loose, in which case it would probably wobble a lot when it spun up.

Well I mouse left handed so it's the right button for me, but normally the left button for a righty. I do most everything else right handed. I changed over to left handed mousing about 12 years ago to save on the right wrist.

Yes it shows on the desktop , never had problems before and I never moved the iMac since the day I got it .

Remember when you mentioned its always better to eject the disc . And I always leave mine in Thats when I found out it would not eject anymore . Maybe thats it ?

Anyway I'll try that biz card trick first , since when I eject it makes that clicking sound and the only way to stop that is to reboot , then try that hold the mouse button . Will try that this weekend when I have time to mess with it .

You could end up with carper tunnel in both wrist .

Since I can swing a hammer with both hands I ended up with what I call , Carpenters Tunnel , which is a cross between Tennis Elbow and Carper Tunnel .