Hiya guys >>

I have an iMAC the Cd / DVD drive will not read normal Cd's, it will however read DVD's and Burn DVD's but not Cd's. Can anyone offer any help with this? Is there anything i can do to solve to problem or does it need to visit the repair shop and what could be the possible problem,

Regards,
Mark.

HL-DT-ST DVDRW GA11N is what is shows in disc utility.

any pointers on this guys?

Are you trying to read commercially-pressed CDs, or are they burnt? Does it occur with multiple discs?

Hello there thanks for your reply, it happens with both commercial disc's and ones that have been burn't. Never happens with Dvd's at all though.

Yep >

I have tried a selection of different cd's, but still to no avail. Its only DVD's its accepting.

I don't have any evidence to verify this, but I have always suspected that there are multiple lasers used in optical drives that support several different disc types. The reason I suspect this is that I've seen countless stories about optical drives that will suddenly stop working with one disc type, but be OK with others.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's an easy fix for your internal SuperDrive. With that said, I would highly recommend looking at a cheap, USB external. This will save you an awful lot of trouble and expense.

I use one of these with my MacBook Pro on occasion to lessen the wear on my internal drive - and it's also significantly faster in certain operations. And the best part is, if it fails, I'm only out the $40 or so, rather than having to rip apart my machine.

That particular model looks to be out of production, but there are many others like it. I think my recommendation would be to look into one of those for what are probably the very rare occasions you'll need to access CDs.

I might have to look at the external alternative for sure.

Could there be a loose connection somewhere, that i can look inside of the iMAC its self?

If the SATA cable was loose, the drive would do nothing. It reads DVD's so the cables must be fine.