Persuade your Mac to give that CD back to you

Eject stuck CD

The Mac is a beautiful but complex piece of technology comprised of many subsystems, background processes, and applications. Although it is well-tested, sometimes the interaction of these subsystems may go wrong, leading to some annoying glitches. An example of such a glitch occurs when your Mac won't eject a CD or DVD disk. Below, we discuss how to handle this situation.

So, say your Mac is refusing to give a CD or DVD back. You have already tried the standard ways to make your CD eject such as dragging the CD icon to the trash menu, using «File>Eject» in the Finder, and pressing the «Eject» button on the keyboard. What do you do now?

Try to find the application that uses a CD or DVD

In Unix systems (and MacOS X is one of those), when an application is using any content from a removable media like a CD or DVD, it will try to prevent it from being removed. The usual suspects are the following:

iTunes

● iTunes — Try to use the «Eject» button in iTunes, as it can be using your disk without showing that in the Finder.

Toast titanium

● Toast Titanium software can also silently use your disk and not let it go. If you are using it, choose «Eject Disk» from its menu bar.

VMFusion

● VMFusion VMFusion is another application with a habit of not showing the system that it is using a CD. This happens when a vitalized operating system uses CD content. So, make sure the CD/DVD is disconnected from the virtual machine, and try ejecting it again.

Use the system utilities

Eject disk

If the above methods do not work, try using some system utilities:

● Launch Disk Utility, and select the disk you want to eject. Then click the «Eject» button

● Open up the Terminal application, and type the following command without the quotes: «drutil tray eject», which will try to force the disk out of the CD-ROM holder. If the disk showed up, take it out and issue the «drutil tray close» command in the Terminal

Reboot-based eject

If the system utilities did not help out, just use some means of ejecting when rebooting your Mac:

● If there is an «Eject» button on Your keyboard just keep the «Option» button pressed when rebooting. Your Mac will provide you with a start-up disk selection screen. This is the right time to hit «Eject». Still no luck? Let's move on to the next option.

● Restart the computer holding Command-Option-O-F, which will lead you to an Open Firmware command prompt. Enter «eject cd» and press return, which should make your disk eject. Note that this will not work on Intel Macs, as they do not have Open Firmware.

Command option OF

● Try rebooting while holding down the trackpad button. This is another way of ejecting a disk during a reboot.

Taking the disk out manually

The methods described above may have no effect if there is a hardware problem with your CD/DVD drive. In fact, these devices are quite tender in both PCs and Macs and can start malfunctioning for the following reasons:

● Mechanical damage caused by hitting or falling down

● An attempt to insert a disk of a different size or things not designed for CD trays (yes, children love doing that)

● Some parts in disk drives are quite inclined to die young

● Some liquid penetrated your CD drive accidentally

You will probably not even be aware which of these problems caused your drive to malfunction. Given this, you have the following options of getting your disk out:

● Use a paperclip — Some Macs have a tiny hole for a paperclip near their CD/DVD drive. Insert a straightened paperclip into this hole to make a CD mechanically eject.

Manually eject disc