Blank DVDs not recognized

I had never burned a DVD on my MacBook, which I have had for a year now, so earlier today I decided to try it out, as I wanted to give a friend a film which I have on my hard disk. The first time I inserted a blank DVD-R it took a long time for the dialog box to appear and ask me what I wanted to do, but it eventually did, and I successfully burned my film onto the DVD.

However, when I tried to do exactly the same operation on another identical blank DVD-R, I heard a lot of spinning and no dialog box appeared. Also, the disk image failed to appear on the desktop and the DVD was spat back out.

I've tried this several times to no avail, and I can't seem to find a reasonable explanation. It worked once before, and apparently DVD-Rs should pose no problems, just like the first and only one I have managed to burn. Could there be something wrong with my Superdrive?

Any suggestions welcome.

John go to Finder Preferences and ensure show DVD/CD's is selected. If that is okay may well be the media. Like Verbatim discs and never had a burn failure with them yet touch wood (as he knocks his head).

Next step could be optical drive. DO you use Toast? preferences can be set to open thjat program when a blank disc is inserted.

Thanks Harry. My DVD/CD's is selected in the Finder Preferences, and I've just tried Toast at your prompting, but the computer just doesn't want to acknowledge that there's a DVD in there. Lots of spinning noises, but the DVD comes back out. Maybe I should try a Verbatim disk, as you suggest, though I'm worried that that won't work either. I just have a bad feeling that it's the Superdrive DVD reader/writer that is the problem and don't know what to do…

That happens with Memorex DVDs on my machine. It even stopped reading Memorex DVDs that it had burned. (Well, I have no proof it burned them. They won't show up again, whether in OS X or 9.)

I'm afraid to try another brand in case it's the drive.

Works with movies, though.

It's good to know that I'm not the only one with this problem, Brown_Study. So although what you say doesn't provide a solution it does give me some consolation. So thanks for that, at least.

I think I'm going to try another DVD brand just in case, unless anyone else has any ideas…

BTW, how do you have the option to use Tiger and OS 9? I thought that Macs with Tiger couldn't run OS 9.

I'm running a mirrored-door wind-tunnel G4 that I bought new when Apple said it would be the last machine that could run 9 (other than through Classic). It wasn't. A later e-Mac was.

The superdrive might be dying of old age, but it still burns CDs no problem.

Like one poster said already, Verbatim works great. Never had an issue with a Verbatim on my Macs and PC. Have had issues with some memorex though.

Thanks dtravis. I'll try a Verbatim DVD tomorrow. And I'll try CDs too, Brown_Study. You seem to have a collector's item! I've never actually heard of a mirrored-door wind-tunnel G4.

This is the machine. It's called a wind tunnel because its fans woke the dead. Apple designed a free modification, and I wasn't evicted, after all.

I bought the smallest pack of Verbatim DVDs I could find — 25.




Well, Memorex DVDs won't even give me that message.

OS 9 says it can't read the DVD, and do I want to format it? Yeah, right. So I told it to do it's thing, and the system crashed.

So with both systems having conniptions, I guess the hardware's fried.