I've been installing software on a new drive in an older MacBook and, after a break of a few hours, the optical drive has decided to stop accepting disks.

The drive will physically accept disks but the software does not appear on the desktop. Then after several seconds, it spits the disk out again. Once, it decided not to eject, but I managed to get it out with right-click-hold following a shutdown and restart.

I'm guessing that something is preventing the drive from reading the disks. Does that sound like a reasonable assumption? If so, what's the cure? If not, what else might the issue be?

Unfortunately, there may not be a cure other than replacing the drive*: the symptoms you describe frequently indicate a dead or dying mechanism. Pretty much the only thing you can do if the condition is salvageable is (1) turn off the drive/MacBook and let it cool down, and/or (2), run a laser lens cleaner disc. Even so, success is not guaranteed, or the problem may return.

*) This may be easier/cheaper with an external drive.

Optical drives can fail in VERY specific ways. It might not read a dual layer burned dvd. Or a manufactured audio CD. Or not write to a CD+R. Or only read manufactured but not burned media. I had a stack of test disks to use when the customer invariably brought in the computer WITHOUT the disc that it would not read.

The easiest test to confirm a hardware problem is to reboot it into the boot selector (hold option) and while the picker is up, insert the disc. If you get it back a short time later, the disc or the drive is bad.

I'm not quite sure what this means.

Here's what I did:

1. Shut down the laptop.
2. Restarted with Option pressed. The drive made a couple of sounds and I inserted a manufactured disk (Bento).
3. After the laptop booted, there were a couple more drive sounds and it spit the disk out.

Then:

1. Shut down the laptop.
2. Restarted and once the desktop was booted, pressed Option and inserted the Bento disk.
3. Disk was spit out again.

Am I doing things incorrectly?

don't just press option. HOLD IT. hold it until you see something instead of the usual grey apple. this is the boot picker, and will display all available startup volumes, allow you to pick one, and boot from it. It's a great platform for testing optical disks because it will try to read some of it, and will eject it if it can't read it, and this is all in firmware. There is no OS / software on your hard drive that may be corrupt or malfunctioning to cause the disk to eject. If you get the disc back, the disc or the drive are bad. (or the disc isn't compatible with the drive which is extremely unlikely)

When you're done testing discs, either select your hard drive, or power off and back on your computer. (don't run the recovery)

No comfort. I only got the Hard Drive, no Optical choice for the Bento disk.

I did a test by first inserting the Snow Leopard system disk, after which I got a choice of either booting from the Hard Drive or the Snow Leopard disk.

So, it appears that the drive is capable of reading disks but has a bias against the Bento disk.

As I recall the Bento disc is not bootable and therefore will not show up on an option boot situation.

However, the initial presenting problem did not involve booting but the failure of a drive to recognize a particular disc when it was inserted. In an optical drive each media type, DVD, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, CD, CD-R, CD-RW uses a unique read laser and a unique write laster. Therefore it is quite common for one laser to burn out rendering the drive unable to read that particular disc type, but still work normally with all other types. In fact it is rather uncommon for an optical drive to fail at reading all media types. Your Snow Leopard disc is a DVD (the data is mechanically stamped onto the disc) and chances are your Bento disc in addition to not being a bootable drive is a DVD +/- R and the read laser for DVD+/-R is burned out. The solution, the only solution in fact, is a new optical drive. It is up to you whether to replace the internal optical drive but my suggestion would be to buy an optical drive in an external enclosure. A USB 2 connection is more than fast enough to support an optical drive, but if you have extra money to spend firewire or even Thunderbolt connections will work.

Ya, been keeping my head in the sand on that one. The drive might never be used for anything other than getting Bento installed.

The irony is that the laptop is simply going to be a utility machine (no Mail or anything where security might be a concern) for things like finishing all the household inventory. Then maybe left in the garage for those times a quick check on the internet is needed, or Bluetooth music playback.

I tried a different approach, which was to drag Bento over using Target Disk. However, it won't give me the opportunity to insert the Key number insisting instead that it's a 29 day trial. I have started the trial, just in case I can enter the Key afterward.

Anticipating that it may still not take the Key after the 29 day period, because Filemaker no longer supports Bento, I thought I'd tried Migration Assistant. However, I wouldn't connect the two machines….I assume because of the two different OS's.

Sigh.

You misconstrue how Migration Assistant works. It does NOT migrate system files, rather it focuses on applications and data files. But since you apparently have two Macs may I suggest you share the working optical drive on one with the laptop?

System Preferences > Sharing > CD or DVD Sharing

Your laptop will then see the shared optical drive as a network resource will be abel to read or write to it just as if it were physically attached to it. That should solve your problem without needing to invest in a new optical drive.

New Suggestion Since you are justifiably concerned about the longevity, or lack thereof, of Bento and depending on your needs, if you need a relational database the Base function in NeoOffice is actually more powerful than Bento, if you need a flat file database BareBones software's Yojimbo is excellent and well supported, and if document and file management is the desired use IMHO Evernote is darn near unbeatable. NeoOffice and Evernote are available from the App Store.

Great idea…thanks! I'm definitely giving that a shot.

I still wonder whether I will be able to use Bento, even if I enter the Registration Key. It may be that, if it needs verification from Filemaker and if they have slammed the door on Bento, I'm still going to be stuck.

In that case…..


I'll be acting on one of your other suggestions. Thanks times two.

Update:

I have Bad News, Good News, and probably More Bad News.

The Bad News is that, after opening a new Finder window on the MacBook, I could not see "Remote Disk" in the sidebar, as I should have.

The Good News is that I looked around and found a bit of Terminal code that made "Remote Disk" appear. I share it here for anyone else that might bump into the same problem as I.

I opened Terminal on the MacBook and typed the following two lines, pressing return after each one. There was no confirmation from Terminal when I finished.

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true

I restarted the MacBook and, when I opened Finder again, I saw “Remote Disk” in the sidebar. I was then able to navigate to the iMac drive, and open and install the Bento disk on the MacBook.

The probably more Bad News is that, after opening the newly installed Bento on the MacBook, it still would not accept the Registration Key.

Boo, hiss, to FileMaker. I fully understand that they don't wish to support software they have discontinued publishing. However, by shutting down the registration connection, they have ensured that every legitimate owner who may buy a new computer will not be able to use the purchased software.

I'm sure they wish to push people to FileMaker but $400 to do simple inventory? As they say in Québec: "Gettez-vous un grip."

I think I'd be giving them a call and demanding a refund or a solution. You have excellent legal grounds to demand relief if they retroactively disable your purchased product.