MacBook optical drive doesn't work

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I have a MacBook (a1181) and when I try to insert disks into the optical drive, they go in, the drive makes some noise like its trying to read the disk, then spits it back out. I tried this with several disks. Next I plugged in an external hard drive, and the MacBook wouldn't even detect the disks from that drive.

I originally thought the optical drive had to be replaced, but now that the external drive does not work either, I'm a bit puzzled.
 

pigoo3

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Your Mac's Specs
2017 15" MBP, 16gig ram, 1TB SSD, OS 10.15
What sort of disks are you inserting (retail disks or burned disks)? If they're burned disks...they may not be the proper disk type to be read by the optical drive (DVD-R, DVD+R, CD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, etc.).

Also...the A1181 model designator covers many many different MacBooks. So it may help to be more specific. Such as listing the cpu speed, cpu type (core duo, core 2 duo), and the gpu type.

- Nick
 
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I tried using burned disks and retail disks.

CPU: 2 GHz Intel Core Duo

GPU: GMA 950
 

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