RutSum

MacBook Slot Load Super Drive Came Back From The Dead

I’ve always been short on hard disk space, which lead me to buy the Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 500 GB. But even that couldn’t keep up with my fanatic data collection hobby. It was soon nearly 90% full and I decided it was time to free some space by removing redundant data and burning other stuff to DVDs. I burnt a few DVDs using Toast Titanium, went perfectly. I cleared out around 25 GB of data, and decided to give the burner some rest.

The next day, I popped in another DVD for burning, and fired up Toast Titanium. While writing the Lead-in, I got a medium write error. I popped in another DVD, ignoring the earlier one as a defected piece in the lot. Tried burning the same project again, same error. Wasted 5 DVDs like this.

Next I tried inserting an already written DVD, tried to read its contents. I waited for a long time, but Mac OS X was unable to detect the DVD. Because the DVD was not detected, Mac OS X was unable to eject it. I had to use evil methods to get it out. After that one was out, I tried inserting a completely new one, scratch free, into the drive. The disc spent about 30 seconds inside the drive, and was then spit out. Tried again, same result. Same with other DVDs. All of them were being spit out.

I ignored the problem for a few days hoping that it would magically sort itself out, but it didn’t. I did some digging online and found out the error was actually quite common. But couldn’t find a one-stop solution to it. Most people had their drives changed when this error popped up and the Apple Store guys did change the drives readily.

It was only a few days ago when I thought of trying a CD lens cleaner on the drive (though I was afraid how it would work because the brush might get stuck inside a slot-load drive). I took the chance, and popped the lens cleaner in, with the cleaner liquid applied on the brush. It repeated the same behavior – was spit out after 30 seconds. I kept repeating the process to make sure the lens was cleaned thoroughly. After 3 times of repeating this, I inserting tried a data DVD.

And it worked. Guess the whole problem was related to dust getting accumulated on the lens. BTW, how does dust get inside the tightly valved slot load Super Drive? (It must’ve got in at the time I left a DVD dangling from it for days together.)

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