Mac stopped accessing internal and external CD drives

[primeevolutionary]

I've tried lots of NVRAM resetting with three and four chimes.

I've added a cloned external Mojave system boot drive and also changed my internal High Sierra drive over to Mojave and neither drive will access the CD drives as well as the original solid state Mojave system drive.

I can see the drives in the system report. I can see them grayed out in Disk Utility, but, no action can be taken in Disk Utility.

When I set the one internal drive back to a High Sierra system boot, I have access to the CDs.

It leaves me to the conclusion that it's a software issue, but, I would think this would be a problem for more people.

The FireWire thing seems resolved and I haven't lost any hard drives since I started messing around with this. I just can't seem to get the CD drives going. It's the same story if I install Blu-ray discs, or, DVDs. It's not the CDs themselves.

[primeevolutionary]

So...now I have a Mac mini M1 and, after Migrating my information over, to the new Mac, this problem has followed me. I pretty much figured that it had to be a software problem, but, thought it was likely to be the age of my old Mac/Graphic card/Mojave. Now, I'm on Big Sur and still can't access the optical drive. I now only have the external drive.

I can see it on my Big Sur laptop. I created an external Big Sur system drive and I can access the optical drive restarting from that drive. So, the optical drive works in Big Sur and can be recognized by Big Sur. I was able to play a CD. Gracenotes found CD and song information.

When using the affected internal Mac mini system drive, I can see the optical drive in Terminal and Disk Utility, but, trying to mount it just times out after a while.

How do I go about trying to figure out what software is interfering? Do I just uninstall things methodically? If I do that, will the CD eventually show up. Like, if I uninstall Sophos and that was the bad software, will the CD likely to show up after a restart?

[mikehalloran]

What is your CD drive?

[primeevolutionary]

Hello, Mike, it's a Samsung SE-506BB.

[mikehalloran]

Hello, Mike, it's a Samsung SE-506BB.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... e_USB.html
Has the MacOS ever supported Blu-Ray? You may need a driver for this.

One easy to find out is to get an inexpensive USB3 CD/DVD player compatible with the M1 and see if that doesn't fix you up. If you buy it on Amazon, it can be returned should that not be the issue.

[primeevolutionary]

Hello, Mike,

It's working on my Big Sur Intel laptop (15-inch, 2018) and this M1 Mini Mac when using a non-migrated Big Sur OS. Neither has an imported driver.

And, yes, this was working for CDs, DVD and Blu-rays up until the beginning of April. Something seems to be blocking its use. I didn't add any new software that I know of, but, I could have tweaked something, or, an update might have changed something.

Joe

[primeevolutionary]

I've now added an OWC Mercury Pro optical drive.

The drive works with my Intel Mac Pro on High Sierra and my Intel MacBook Pro on Big Sur. I am able to play and eject the CD.

On the M1 Mac Mini on Big Sur, I can see the Mercury Pro in System Information, but, I can get it to mount. I can't see the CD in Finder, Disk Utility, or, Music.

When launched in recovery mode, I am able to see the CD and mount it and eject it in Disk Utility. In recovery mode, if I use Terminal, I can get it to mount using diskutil mount disk6 (in this case).

After coming back from recovery mode, Disk Utility can see the drive, but, it is unmounted. If I try to mount it, it times out. If I try to mount it in Terminal, I get the message "Volume on disk6 timed out waiting to mount"

I did contact OWC and they said that the Mercury Pro is completely compatible with the M1 Mac Min and Big Sur 11.3.1.

I have not tried this using the Mojave drive in my Mac Pro that I started having this problem with, but, I believe that I would have the same result that I am having in the Mac Mini. Something is preventing the CD drive from being seen/mounted.

[primeevolutionary]

I'm getting this message in Disk Utility now: Could not mount "Audio CD". (com.apple.DiskManagement.dis enter error 0.)

[primeevolutionary]

I was able to save a disc image of the audio CD from Disk Utility. It won't allow me to Eject from Disk Utility telling that it can't because the CD is in use.

[primeevolutionary]

Created an external Big Sur boot drive and, when launching from that drive, I’m able to access the optical drive.

I’ve removed Sophos, Malwarebyte and Little Snitch from my main launch drive. I was hoping one of those was the culprits.

The next thing I’m going to try is reinstalling the OS to see if that will work. I have my doubts.

The next thing after that would be a clean OS install and reinstalling all of my software. There used to be threads giving hints on what to keep in mind for a clean install. Does anyone know of a particularly good one?

[primeevolutionary]

I did a clean install and now everything works except the stuff that hasn't caught up to M1/Big Sur yet.

Which files will I want to bring over from the original migrated install for my DP saved preferences/presets? I think I remember where to go for my Insert presets.

Where is the User Categories folder for the Effect(s) Chooser?

What about for themes and other preferences I've made like never starting a session in consolidated mode?