Mid 2007 MacBoom SuperDrive

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This is my last throw of the dice on this.

Has Apple owned up to or issued a fix for the problem... Which is-

After rebuilding my macbook (OSX 10.7.5), cd & DVD won't mount. All hardware diagnostics say the hardware is ok. I've surfed all the forums, done all the resets (SMC PRAM etc.)

Any recent developments that I've missed??

Regards

Mike
 
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This is my last throw of the dice on this.

Has Apple owned up to or issued a fix for the problem... Which is-

After rebuilding my macbook (OSX 10.7.5), cd & DVD won't mount. All hardware diagnostics say the hardware is ok. I've surfed all the forums, done all the resets (SMC PRAM etc.)

Any recent developments that I've missed??

What do you mean by "rebuilding"?
 

pigoo3

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Are you sure the Superdrive (optical drive) works?

- Nick
 
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What do you mean by "rebuilding"?


I restored my old iMac drive onto the MacBook. The MacBook was non functioning but I've fully recovered it. The only fly in the ointment is the superdrive ... Disk Util recognises it & I can use the various terminal "configuration" commands which the superdrive accepts.
 
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I restored my old iMac drive onto the MacBook. The MacBook was non functioning but I've fully recovered it. The only fly in the ointment is the superdrive ... Disk Util recognises it & I can use the various terminal "configuration" commands which the superdrive accepts.

You took a drive from an iMac containing an OS installation intended for that iMac (drivers and all) (EDIT: I'm assuming you didn't reinstall the OS anyway... my bad if you did); popped it into a MacBook; and expected it to just work as normal? That doesn't always work out that well. The hardware isn't the same and thus, the OS may be loading drivers intended for the old hardware. I also have no idea why you are using Terminal to configure anything. My sole recommendation here is to backup your drive; wipe the drive clean; and reinstall OS X from scratch. You can migrate your user data from the backup after reinstallation.
 
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pigoo3

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All the terminal commands work, it takes the CD/DVD in, but won't mount it & then ejects it.

I'm talking under normal conditions (no messing around with Terminal). I define "normal conditions" as…boot the computer..insert a disk…and it mounts (using Terminal is unnecessary).

If the disk does not mount…either:

- the disk is damaged
- the disk is not compatible with the drive
- the drive is busted
- previous Terminal commands that were used...have "confused" things. And maybe any optical drive settings that were changed should be reset to default settings.

I'm thinking (given that slot-loading drives can have durability issues)…that it is very possible that the optical drive is failing.

* Nick
 
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You took a drive from an iMac containing an OS installation intended for that iMac (drivers and all) (EDIT: I'm assuming you didn't reinstall the OS anyway... my bad if you did); popped it into a MacBook; and expected it to just work as normal? That doesn't always work out that well. The hardware isn't the same and thus, the OS may be loading drivers intended for the old hardware. I also have no idea why you are using Terminal to configure anything. My sole recommendation here is to backup your drive; wipe the drive clean; and reinstall OS X from scratch. You can migrate your user data from the backup after reinstallation.


Restored the data from my dead iMac to the MacBook hard drive.. Long story on a previous post.. There is a known and well documented issue with the internal SuperDrives .. But no real solutions as far as I can see.
 
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Restored the data from my dead iMac to the MacBook hard drive.. Long story on a previous post.. There is a known and well documented issue with the internal SuperDrives .. But no real solutions as far as I can see.

I see from another discussion that "The MacBook was working fine until I changed the SuperDrive, now it won't switch on". I also see your other discussion about restoring your data, but it's still not clear to me if you did a clean install of OS X to your MacBook's drive and then restored your user data from the iMac's drive, or if you cloned the entirety of your iMac's drive to the MacBook's drive completely. For example, you said you "Created a recovery flash drive disk, booted up on that, partitioned the source disc to below 160gb and then restored the data filled partition to the internal disc." That sounds like you cloned the iMac drive to the MacBook drive (bad thing to do), but it also could be interpreted as meaning you manually copied your personal data files over. We simply don't KNOW what you've done. You are rather vague on this and may be using terminology inappropriately.

Regardless, here's the other thing. You changed out the DVD drive yourself for some reason, leading to a failure of the MacBook to boot. Quite frankly it sounds like you didn't do this swap-out right, or damaged something in the process. It's also been pointed out that these slot-loading Superdrives are notorious for having a short life. There's not much of a solution here because we simply don't know PRECISELY what you have done with this thing or what damage you may have caused yourself. I for one have no interest in trying to sort this out. Again, my sole recommendation is to reinstall OS X from scratch. Do this:

  1. Make a backup of your internal drive to an external drive. Use a cloning tool like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
  2. Boot off the recovery partition and reinstall OS X from scratch. Clean install it by formatting the internal drive first. Instructions here:
    https://support.apple.com/kb/PH4439
  3. Once OS X is reinstalled, migrate your data back over using the Migration Assistant. You can migrate from the cloned drive or from a Time Machine backup.

If you need any clarification on these steps, feel free to ask. Until we have a clean, properly installed and working installation of OS X on your MacBook, I think trying to troubleshoot this is an exercise in futility.
 

pigoo3

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Long story on a previous post.. There is a known and well documented issue with the internal SuperDrives .. But no real solutions as far as I can see.

What exactly is this well-documented issue?

What is known regarding slot-loading Apple optical drives is. They are not at durable as tray loading optical drives. So you simply may have a failing slot loading drive.

- Nick
 
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Do I dare mention to try cleaning the optical drive innards with a disk cleaner, preferably with Mac instructions, and some good long shots with compressed air Dust Off or equivalent with the small tube inserted into the slot??
 

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