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June 26, 2006
A Hot Tip - if ever a disc gets stuck in your slot drive
I messed up, and slid a CD-R from a friend into my MacBook Pro's SuperDrive. I didn't really pay attention to the fact that the friend had placed a paper label onto the disc.
The track I selected played fine for a few minutes, then stopped. I went over to check on it, and found the drive making some very unhappy noises (one of which, intermittent, was somewhere between a foghorn and a fart). "Oh dear," I said. (Yeah, right.)
So, I immediately went searching for answers. The user guide stops cold at "reboot with the trackpad button depressed" and I knew that wasn't going to cut it. The problem wasn't that the drive wasn't responding, or that the Mac had "forgotten" its existence. This was a very specific physical problem.
So, I read about all kinds of scary remedies having to do with 45-degree angles, business cards, battery bubble pack cards, and -- gulp -- paper clips, and even tried one or two (no paper clip is going near my slot, thank you very much).
Then I read something that made sense. Just turn the thing off, place the machine where it can get nice and cool, and wait. This accomplishes two things, in my book. One, a person has time to breathe, and to avoid those irrational thoughts that could mean a heap of regret. Two, the glue on the disc has time to regain a solidity-ready temperature, and the paper, I guess, stops being swollen.
At any rate, I returned to the nicely chilled machine and touched the power button with as close to a prayer as I typically muster, and the first thing I heard was a smooth spin out of that disc drive, and I hit the eject button just as soon as I was able (note to all: I did NOT hold down any buttons during this boot). The disc ejected easily, and has been relegated to the old JVC boom box, where it has all the room it needs.
Now if I can just get the stuck DVD out of my 5-disc changer, I'll be a happy dude.
DISCLAIMER: I know that there can be many reasons why a disc won't eject from a slot drive, so let it be known that I am not arguing against using the trick-key restart remedies that probably do work in those other situations. This cooling-off fix had to do with a paper label, and yes, I now realize that I was stupid for putting the thing in there to begin with. That is all.
Miscellaneous | By joe lance | 07:09 PM