Eject a Stuck Disk from your Mac DVD Super Drive
A friend of mine that is new to Macs couldn’t figure out how to get a CD to eject, after some frustration he then complained that his MacBook doesn’t have the paperclip hole to forcibly eject a disc from the superdrive. After some discussion I realized he’s probably not alone in his confusion of how eject a stuck disk on a Mac, so here’s a few different ways to do it, ranging from easy to more advanced. If a disk is still stuck in the drive after these methods have been exhausted, you may have an actual hardware problem.
How to Eject a Stuck Disk from a Mac
The first thing to do is try the four easy Mac disk eject methods described in the next few steps, each of these is intended to trigger the ejection mechanism of a superdrive / DVD drive on the Mac computer. You may not need to complete all four methods, or you may need to jump ahead to the advanced section below if you’re continuing to have troubles.
1) Press and hold the Eject key on your keyboard for 5-10 seconds, it looks like the above icon in this post. This should trigger the manual eject mechanism.
2) Next, right-click (control-click) on the disks icon on the Desktop and select “Eject” from the contextual menu
3) Drag the disks icon to the Trash bin within the Dock will eject disks as well.
4) Selecting the disk icon upon the desktop, then hit “Command-E” on the keyboard
The disk should eject with one of those steps, but if it doesn’t you can also try the methods described below. These are a bit more advanced, involving applications or the command line to manually trigger the ejection routine of the hardware.
Advanced Mac Stuck Disk Ejection Methods
Force Ejecting a Disk with Disk Utility
• Launch Disk Utility and select the CD/DVD from the sidebar. Click the Eject icon at the top of the Disk Utility screen, it should pop right out.
Forcibly Ejecting a Disc with the Command Line
• The command line can trigger the disk eject mechanism on Macs that are equipped with SuperDrives and DVD drives. This often works to forcibly push out a stuck CD or DVD from the drive.
To do this, launch the Terminal and type following command:
drutil eject
If the drive is working, you will hear the eject mechanism. Sometimes the stuck disk only partially ejects using this trick, so you’ll want to be ready to pull it out either with fingers or whatever else you feel like safely using.
Force Eject a Disc on Boot
Another trick is the force-eject on boot: This is done by restarting your Mac and holding down the mouse button (or trackpad button if you have a laptop) as the system boots. Hold it down until the system boots, again the disk should come out.
In the rare event that I have a stuck disk in my Mac I opt for the Terminal command mentioned above, it hasn’t failed me yet, though the ‘on boot’ method is also usually a guarantee to work assuming the drive itself isn’t broken.
Let us know what works for you in the comments below!
I tried everything and then finally on a reboot held down the mouse button. It worked it was the only thing that worked. Thank you!
So! We were having a terrible time getting a burned disc to read. Wouldn’t eject. Computer wouldn’t read it. We tried every trick from multiple threads on this topic. The one that worked was rebooting the computer and holding down the right side of the track pad while it reboots.
We used these instructions from above:
“Another trick is the force-eject on boot: This is done by restarting your Mac and holding down the mouse button (or trackpad button if you have a laptop) as the system boots. Hold it down until the system boots, again the disk should come out“
I cannot believe it worked. Thank you so very much!
None of these solutions worked for me until I tried…
1) Shut down your Mac (at least I shut it down)
2) Startup. At the startup tone press the option key
3) You will see graphics of your drives
4) Press the eject button
5) Your disc will eject
6) Select your boot disc and boot as normal
7) Use stupid disc as frisbee or coaster
Thank you!! this was the only thing that worked after command line and all other options failed to eject the disk
The CD in my iMac wasn’t even showing. i.e. the Mac wasn’t reading it period. I tried the terminal command and out she popped. Thanks.
Totally frozen and spinning ball. Nothing worked except your excellent solution to hold down mouse button after powering off and on. THANK YOU SO MUCH! It was just so easy peasy.
I used the “Hold the left mouse button down” while starting up an iMac that wouldn’t boot up. Worked like a charm… much thanks.
Thanks heaps!!!
Tried loads of things and eventially came across your suggesstions, the terminal command worked a treat
Much appreciated
Nothing worked until I used the terminal command. Worked like a charm. Thanks.
The eject button worked ( I never knew thats what that was ) I always used the drop down menu and sometimes eject option wasn’t even there. Thanks
None of these has worked for me. I have the first model of Intel iMac with a failing motherboard. I used the install disc to reboot it sufficiently to enable me to wipe the HD before sending the computer away to be recycled. I successfully acheived the secure erase of the HD, but now can’t eject the install disc. In Disk Utility the ‘eject’ button on top menu is dimmed. If I attempt to ‘erase’ the disk, giving me an apparently functioning ‘eject’ button, it does nothing. I understand that it is ‘illegal’ to send the computer away with an OS X disc in it that was paid for (an upgrade disc). I’m stuck as well as the disc!
Restart your computer and when it’s rebooting, click and hold down the mouse button and it will auto-eject. (I called Apple, and this technique worked for me).
Thank’s a lot. The eject key on the keyboard worked for me!
Worked like a champ on reboot
WOW I have been using my mAC for 5 years i did not know about the eject key in the keyboard!! this works for me. Thanks you!
Terminal method did it…thank you!
(nothing else worked)
I opened the disk utility from the applications menu and clicked on the drive in the device window. It calculated for about 5 seconds and the disk popped out with the cd backing paper still attached. I mistakenly inserted the cd with the slip of paper at the bottom of the cd spindle still attached, but it came out fine. I’m glad I didn’t disassemble the computer!
Thank you so much – this worked great. I was just about to take the thing to the computer store – that would have been some cash.
My superdrive had two disks loaded somehow it had accepted a disk when there was already one in. the terminal command line option ‘drutil eject’ made superdrive try to eject every time whereas some of the keyboard shortcut and desktop icon methods did not. in all fairness i didn’t try em all as soon as I saw a command line option I went for that and ‘drutil eject’ worked. Thanks
Thank you thank you thank you!!!!! The Terminal solution worked perfectly. Thank you!
Gracias! Last option worked just fine!
I unplugged and held the iMac on its side disc drive facing the floor then plugged in and rebooted holding down mouse key it popped right out after 20 fails.
tried all suggestions and non have worked so far – does this mean a trip to the apple shop?
It whirs away but no sign of the CD coming out, sometimes it registers on the desktop as to what CD is and other times it says i inserted a blank CD either way the disc is not coming out :(
Thanks
The reboot with the mouse button worked perfectly…. thanks for sharing.
The reboot with mouse held down worked GREAT ! Thank you !
Tried everything, but nothing did the trick until I read about the paperclip. It worked perfect! Thanks!
drutil eject worked wonderfully thank you so much
drutil eject
The CD kept ejecting, but only a tiny bit, then sucking back in again. None of these suggestions worked. The disk did not come far enough out of the slot to grab with tweezers. We finally found two utility knife blades thin enough and long enough to get in to the slot, trap the disk and yank it out during one of the eject cycles.
This is a popular topic on the web, which suggests Apple might want to consider fixing this obvious design flaw.
Late-2009 MacBook Pro. Had tried several options (except for Disc Utility, which was the next.) But “Drutil eject” command on Terminal ejected the CD right away. Also, I have an external drive AND a pen drive connected, and neither was affected. THANKS!
PS Ron Bierma, I sure hope you can find a solution too!
2011 iMac – disc loads and plays – won’t eject. Tried EVERYTHING. Eject button, Command E, R mouse click on re-start, paperclip, Terminal key entry, Nothing works. Disc reloads and plays. HELP!! On my older iMac, I could take off the back, and gently nudge the disc out, but this model seems to be seamless.
thanks for the help.
tried everything to eject a stuck DVD
at the end the command at Terminal: drutil eject
did the trick. So relieved.
To force eject a disc on an iMac, turn off computer and as computer is restarting hold down left mouse button. Do not go to re start in menu. Use button on iMac and hold it down for 10 seconds. Better still turn it off at the wall. If you just restart you may experience problems like losing your date and time and wireless info.
Hope this helps someone.
Thanks for your help
I have a 2008 Intel Imac with Lion OS and latest Safari and other software. The Terminal option worked great the first time. Thank you!
*iMac
The terminal option is a good one, but it might be worth knowing that if you have external optical drives connected, the command “drutil eject” might actually eject one of these instead of your internal optical drive. This has happened to me just today. However, if you are not sure which number is assigned to your internal optical drive (in my case “0”) (Zero), you can find this if you have Disk Utility open, and then go to terminal app again and type in “drutil eject 0” (or what ever your DVD drive number is), then press enter, and it will eject the disc in the internal CD/DVD.
Thanks!
The terminal command worked for me.
My iMac keeps hanging on to the “Apple” Logo and shutting down. I inserted Hardware Check DVD and it got stuck after 2min. So I reboot. Now I cant seem to eject the dvd.
Help!
Disk Utility worked a treat. Many thanks. AI
Great guidance. The disk utility (superdrive EJECT) trick worked beautifully. My CD has been in for over a week, thanks so much :)
I had this problem and none of the steps shown fixed it until I realized that the iMac super drive was also mounted inside a virtual machine running on parallels desktop. This caused the DVD to not show up on Finder and would not eject with any ‘normal method’. After unmounting the drive in the virtual host, the drive became visible (and ejectable) in finder!
My situation is similar to yours – the VCD does not show up in Finder and none of the ‘normal methods’ work. How do I find if my iMac superdrive is also mounted inside a virtual machine? I have a partition using Bootcamp for Windows XP, if that has any bearing. How do I unmount the drive from the virtual host?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
I have an IMAC. I tried restarting and it tried to access the disc (looking to boot from drive I think) in any event, the computer would not reboot so did not have a chance to use some of the methods described in this thread. I stuck a paperclip in the slot kept the disc from spinning when I rebooted. The disc was ejected!
If nothing works try this:
Take two credit cards. First put one of the into the slut while tilting outer end upward. This helps you tilt the inner edge downward. Then slide in maybe quarter or half of it. Take second card and do above actions inverse. The idea is to get the stuck disc by means of two cards used as if a tweezers. Last but not the least while pressing the credit cards pull out the DVD. It would come out very easily. I have tried everything above the took out two Dvds out of my superdrive. The second one forced into while the first one still in there most probably by my lovely daughter
Thank you sooooooo much for posting. It’s the only method that worked after my wonderful daughter put TWO DVDs in the drive.
Many thanks! The credit card method plus a carefully timed >drutil eject
command did the trick. Two CDs were stuck in there.
Sweet!! “drutil eject” totally worked!!! *thanks*!!! :D
Had a DVD stuck in my MacBook drive and tried everything. Nothing worked. Was on the point of giving up and going to the Apple store when I decided to try once more and reboot but this time I had the brainwave of holding the thing UPSIDE down. Bingo! Having wasted about an hour trying everything else I was relieved to eventually succeed. Hope this helps where everything else may fail.
Option number 3 just worked for me, thanks!
THANKS!!! the terminal “drutil eject” worked when all else failed on a scratched DVD from the library!
This did the trick to me:
1bis) close all finder windows.
hi
i can not eject of the cd macbook air 13″
and i have not a key
Lucky for you, the MacBook Air 13″ doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive, so you don’t need to eject anything! But the key is F12
thanks Tim Grivas…your suggestion was the only one that worked for me.
None of the above tricks worked on mu iMac with OS Lion. Finally a power off / on brought back the disk icon on the desktop so that I could reject normally the disk.
Apparently a power off/on is different than a reboot in Mac OS Lion.
2-week-old Mac Pro, 10.6.6 None of the above fixes works in my case, as the computer will not boot with this disk (a Leopard install disk I was using to create a bootable zip drive) in the drive. Without the OS loaded, keyboard commands and so on are not accessible.
There is nothing bent or damaged; it’s just that the drive spins constantly and without stopping the spin it cannot eject. I’m trying the standby stop-the-DVD-with-a-bit-of-cardboard trick, but it appears that the new Pros have slightly less clearance above the disk surface then my 1st-generation Pro, and I can’t get the angle I need. For this I paid four thousand dollars? Sheesh.
I had a similar problem which none of the above fixes worked on. I had a bent drive frame. The front of frame was bent down just enough to prevent the disc from coming out. This required the removal of the drive, bent it back, reinstalled and its worked great ever since.
I had this problem and nothing worked. So I tried the reboot. System stopped me sayig windows was running in Parallels. I stopped windows and suddenly the disk became available and I ejected it. I had noticed windows media player launched while the disk was inserted and so guess that somehow windows hijacked it.
[…] you need to, find out what to do if you have an exceptionally stubborn stuck disk in a Mac DVD drive. If it’s stuck in a portable Mac, learn how to eject a stuck DVD from a MacBook & […]
I have a DVD currently stuck in my Macbook! I have tried every currently published method to remove it. The disk will play and I have no trouble booting the machine. All of the published methods (pushing Eject/ Mouse button/ Cmd E etc) are just a means to accessing the software eject! even Drutil Eject in Terminal is the same thing! none of them get my disk out I need a physical way to do it without trashing my drive! please help!
Dudley,
This is a problem that I experienced last year when I was given a couple of sub standard DVD’s (probably pirate). I found by shutting down and leaving my MacPro to cool off for 15-20 minutes and restarting did the trick. The issue is with a sub standard disk it can be slightly thinner than the norm. This results in warping. Thus preventing ejection. Hope this helps.
[…] from Eject a Stuck Disk from your Mac SuperDrive […]
I Have tried everything thing possible and will have to replace the cd drive. Probably broken Please advise HOW?
Darn,
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2285
Wow! This actually worked for me! Most all of the other suggestions were variations on pushing the eject key and I could hear that all of them attempted to eject the disk, which was obviously PHYSICALLY stuck in the drive. But this paperclip trick worked great!
forgot the link :-)
From Apple:
UNEVEN EDGE OF THE CD OR DVD
There are two levers on a slot-loading CD/DVD drive that help center a CD/DVD disc. Some CDs and DVDs have an uneven edge which can cause enough friction to prevent the disc from ejecting.
If this happens follow these steps:
1. Take a large paperclip and grasp it with one hand so that about three quarters of an inch, or 18 millimeters, extends beyond your fingers. Insert the paperclip into the CD/DVD slot about 1.5 inches, or 36 millimeters, from the left edge of the slot. See below.
CD/DVD Slot
2. With the other hand, drag the disc icon on the desktop to the Trash to force the computer to eject the disc. When you hear the disc attempt to eject, slide the paperclip to the left edge of the slot and then remove the paperclip. You should feel a little resistance from the spring loaded centering lever. See below.
Paperclip Inserted into the Slot
3. Once the disc has been successfully ejected, wipe the outside edge of the CD/DVD with your hands. Cleaning the edge of the disc in this way will reduce the likelihood of the disc becoming stuck again.
My CD popped out after rebooting and pressing the mousepadbutton as you described but while holding the mousepadbutton I lifted the MacBook in an 45° angle.
DAS HALF SCHLUSSENDLICH!
I had a DVD stuck in an iMac and I got it out by holding the mouse button on reboot. Worked great. How did I not know this already?
if the disk is not being seen or the you are getting the beach ball and the disc is not being seen then pull the plug for power off
turn on the power and hold the eject button down until the disc pops out. the imac never gets to mount it and ejects it right away. this works if the disc info is corrupted or making the operating system stall.
Thanks this worked when all else failed.
Thanks, everything failed before until now… muy agradecido !! :)
Thank you so much! This worked when nothing else did.
Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks!! This method worked for me after trying everything above!
If the disk isn’t willingly to eject you could also try to restart the finder or try [sudo umount -f /Volumes/DISKLABEL] and try ejecting it again, works sometimes too.