Stuck DVD in iMac
Last night I encountered an issue where a blank DVD got stuck in my iMac computer. This happened because there was an clear empty disk stuck to the botton of the blank disk. Ya, it's hard to explain. I wasn't really paying attention and sort of forced the disk into the drive. As a results the computer wasn't able to eject the disk. I could here it try to eject the disk when I click on the eject button, but nothing was happening. Almost immediately I went searching online to find the solution to the problem.
Almost everything I read said that I was pretty much out of luck and would have to take it to a service center, or the Apple store to get fix. This of course means that it could cost a lot of money, since the computer isn't under warranty anymore. Also there's some risk that I could loose all the data on my computer. (Apple has a disclaimer that you should back up your entire computer before getting it service.)
I used some of my Macintosh experience and was able to get the disk out. Here's what I did to fix the problem:
- First I restarted the computer
- When the computer came back up I could hear the disk try to eject, but it wasn't coming out of the computer far enough for me to try to get it out.
- I opened up the Terminal Application and then typed in this command three times:
- drutil eject -drive internal
- The disk ejected just fine.
I am not sure exactly why restarting and then attempting to eject worked. But that's what it took to make it work. After I ejected it, I put in another DVD in the drive and was successfully able to burn data.