July 2nd, 2009

How-to: Reset a noisy optical drive in the Mid-2009 MacBook Pro

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 3:13 pm

Categories: Hardware, MacBook Pro, Optical Drive

Tags: Optical Drive, Apple MacBook, Disc, Apple MacBook Pro, Jason D. O'Grady

While playing with my new 3GHz “Mid 2009” MacBook Pro I noticed that it made that weird optical drive load/unload sound three times in a row, instead of the usual one, any time the drive was used.

If you don’t have a CD or DVD handy you can invoke the sound by clicking on System Profiler > Hardware > Serial-ATA.

The solution, according to an Apple knowledge base article, is to reset the optical drive as follows:

1. Insert a CD or DVD almost all the way into the drive.
2. Remove the disc.
3. Insert the disc fully into the optical disc drive.

The optical drive is now reset and the noise should no longer be present when you start up or wake the computer.

A video of the procedure is also available and it worked like a charm for me.

October 22nd, 2008

OWC announces external Blu-Ray drive

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 8:45 am

Categories: Hardware, Optical Drive, Peripheral

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Blu-ray Drive, OWC, Other World Computing Mercury Pro, FireWire, Blu-Ray, Desktops, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, DVD

Other World Computing (OWC) today announced its new line of Mercury Pro Blu-ray external drives for the Mac. They’re the first Blu-ray external drives on the market that offer four interfaces, including FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA. The OWC Mercury Pro drives feature 4x Blu-ray disc write speed for burning up to 1 gigabyte of data per minute; data transfer rate of up to 150MB per second; plug and play compatibility with both Windows and Mac.

Mercury Pro Blu-ray external drives are compatible with iTunes, iDVD 5, DVD Studio Pro and Roxio Toast, among others and start at US$499.99.

February 26th, 2007

Best practices: optical media selection and care

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 6:19 am

Categories: Media, Optical Drive

Tags:

Last week after a piece of optical media destroyed my MacBook Pro's SuperDrive, I began getting more cautious (bordering on paranoid, actually) about the types and kinds of optical media that I trust my backups and data to. 

Some of my best practices (with some help from Jonas at Media Supply) are:

Speed: Although the MacBook Pro 15-inch (Core 2 Duo) SuperDrive has a maximum write time of 6x you should buy 8x media. There is no real advantage in buying 16x media, unless your burner is fast enough to support it. 16x media is not any better quality than 8x.

Printability: Some people care about top layer printability but it's not a priority for me (especially after the top layer de-laminated in my drive). I prefer to purchase the shiny silver media or silver thermal media. Personally I avoid white thermal (because I never print on them) and because of the aforementioned problems.

Brand: I only purchase Taiyo Yuden optical media and opt for their premium line (not the value line). If you're vendor doesn't state which Taiyo Yuden they sell, clarify with them. They may be selling the company's lesser-quality value line. Japanese-made Taiyo Yuden optical media is widely considered to be the best of the best. It's made by the inventor of the CD-R disc and has the widest playback compatibility, lowest error rates and comes with a 100-year data integrity guarantee. You should also check to make sure that you're buying real Taiyo Yuden media.

Markers: Buy and use only water-based markers (I like MAM CD Marking Pens). Solvent-based pens (like Sharpies) can attack the protective coating CDs and ruin your data or music. You can tell by the strong smell of the ink when it's solvent based. For further reading check out Media Science's Is it safe to use marking pens on CD-R discs?

What are your best practices? 

February 20th, 2007

The DVD-R media that destroyed my SuperDrive (photos)

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 12:00 am

Categories: Hardware, MacBook Pro, Media, Optical Drive

Tags:

 

Yesterday I inserted a blank DVD-R disc into my MacBook Pro (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo) like I've done dozens of times before. But this time was different. This time it destroyed my SuperDrive.

After I inserted the blank DVD-R media I didn't immediately notice that it didn't mount in the Finder and promptly forget about it. About 20 minutes later when I noticed that it didn't mount I pressed the eject key on the keyboard and heard a horrible crumpling sound. I got chills as I watched the disc above slowly come out of my SuperDrive.

When the disc came out of my drive the white thermal printing was mostly de-laminated from the top of the disc surface. About half of the white thermal surface had peeled off inside the SuperDrive mechanism. Note: that is not a label that I installed or some sort of a sticker, it's the white thermal printable top coat that ships from the manufacturer on the media.

Pieces of the label were trapped throughout the inside of my SuperDrive and it wouldn't read any disc, in fact, subsequent discs that were inserted got scratched beyond further use by all the white shards that were distributed throughout the inside of my machine.

Since I couldn't be without my optical drive a trip to the Apple store in Atlantic City was in order. I booked a Genius appointment online and drove to A.C. over lunch.

After dropping off my MBP at the A.C. store around 1:00pm, I got a call around 4:00pm that it was completed. The genius (Kyle) informed me that the SuperDrive had to be replaced and that white flecks of plastic were all over his bench. The manager of the store informed me that the replacement drive would not have been covered if I didn't have AppleCare and that the repair cost would normally cost US$310 for the drive and US$135 for labor.

The media was Prodisc White Thermal Hub Printable 8x DVD-R (~0.29/disc) purchased from SuperMediaStore.com.

Imprint code (inside hub, underside): ZC9742-DVR-I47A
Serial number (inside hub, top): 4203E1111-08064C15
Roxio's Toast 8 reports media code*: MCCRG20 (pictured, left)

Save yourself a US$445 repair bill and stay away from this media at all costs.

According to a friend in the optical media business Prodisc is a B-grade product. He recommends Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim which are top quality discs.

*You can search for optical media codes on Video Help's search page.

I posted five images of the defective media in this gallery. 

What has your experience been with optical media? Have you ever seen anything like this?