NEC internal DVD-RW problems

[thendis]

hello!

I have an internal dual-layer NEC DVD-RW on my eMac, which works fine. Have burnt many things and read many discs. Problem is that is only works when you first place it in. If you leave it in without reading the disc long enough (and the drive powers down), when you try to eject ot read the disc it doesn't power back up. Instead it just 'thinks' forever (that friggin spinning coloured wheel...hate that little punk!). If you try to restart or shut down the system hangs and you have to force it to shut down by holding down power button or unpluging the comp.

At this point I have to insert a disc, do what i have to do, then eject it before it powers down.

Not a huge problem, but can get annoying.

Any ideas? thanks for the help

Specs:
eMac 800, 1Gig RAM
OS X 10.3.7
NEC DVD-RW DL (pretty sure. When I load Toast it says NEC down the bottom. It was LaCie branded, so you never really know exactly what brand it is!)

 

[Aptmunich]

Hi, I have a similar drive, but haven't experienced any problems of that kind...

Can you see the disk in disk utility? Normally it should show up there even if it isn't mounted. Maybe you can manually mount the disk from there and then eject it?

 

[thendis]

Can you see the disk in disk utility? Normally it should show up there even if it isn't mounted. Maybe you can manually mount the disk from there and then eject it?

Thanks for the reply.

Tried your advice. When DVD drive failed to respond, i fired up disk utility.

then it happened. that little punk spinning coloured wheel returned. lol

so yeah, the disk util window just keeps 'thinking' and never actually opens.

I also opened utility before putting a disc in the drive and it did not show up. are you saying that it should be in there, even though nothing is inside?

 

[immdb]

Don't know if this fixes your type of problem…
http://www.patchburn.de/download.html

Try ejecting the disc with another application, such as iTunes or Toast?
Have you tried setting the computer and hard drives to never sleep? I seen this reportedly worked on a different burner.

 

[thendis]

tried installing patchburn but no luck

no, other apps don't work for ejecting. any app that uses an optical drive will lock up once it starts going dodgy.

Have you tried setting the computer and hard drives to never sleep? I seen this reportedly worked on a different burner.

that did seem to work. can't be sure until I start using it over next couple days, but tried putting a disc in a waiting for a few mins, then ejecting it and it actually DID!

obviously it would be nice if i could keep it on energy saving mode, so any other ideas on how to fix it are welcome, but thank you immdb very much for that, and Aptmunich too. Will keep me from going insane for a bit longer!

 

[thendis]

ah crap. it just happened again. looks like it didn't work after all.

 

[Macman]

are you good with hardware? sounds like maybe a lose connection or something, as far as ejecting, its possible the drive isnt recieving the signal. if it were external, you could try disconnecting it totally,then reconnecting it to reset oit. or have you tried resetting the pmu?