Optical drive not recognising CD data
I am using a MacBook Pro 13" i5 Mid-2012 (Mojave) and, though the laptop recognises i still have a CD-ROM in the drive, the disc won't eject no matter what i do.
I have tried any number of the following:
Restarted the Mac and held down the left part of the tracking pad;
Typed in the special command on Terminal;
Held down command + E after restarting;
Held down the Eject button while restarting.
The present situation is like this:
I know from experience that buying a 'Super'drive (i use the term loosely - not a fan) and connecting it externally via USB or whatever does nothing for me in terms of my laptop recognising the device.
I haven't had the patience, inclination or indeed the courage to rip open my laptop which (other than being a good bit slower than my souped-up, customised M2 Macbook Air) does things like playing iTunes pretty effectively in no small part due the Intel processor's compatibility with a multi-band dynamics processing plug-in - whatever happened to Volume Logic??
Ultimately, after that huge digression (for which apologies) a hard reset is an absolute last resort.
As i mentioned, i do have an M2 and it has exactly the same iTunes library on it as my Macbook Pro - I uploaded the library from my external SSD without issue.
The short-term aim is to be able to play the majority of my iTunes Media library together with the plug-in on the MacBook Pro. The long-term aim is to possibly invest in a NAS drive so i can listen to/watch media wirelessly, though these devices do not seem nearly as popular as they once were.
So here's what I'm thinking...
What's the difference between, say, ripping music from my own personal collection onto Apple Music - then going into my music library and copying said files onto SSD, which would then be uploaded onto my iTunes Media library on the MacBook Pro? Would there be any compatibility issues in that regard (I wouldn't be using my SSD as a Time Machine device; merely as a means of backing up and transferring data from one device to the other)?
I know that it is possible to replace a broken drive (or maybe even fix one, if it's a software rather than a hardware issue) thanks to sites like ifixit and i also know that it's even possible to replace the optical drive with a new SSD - and this is something I've definitely been considering as the Superdrives seem too apt to go wrong.
What I don't want to do is take the laptop apart, remove the optical drive and find out that my laptop will still not recognise any external optical drive I connect to it.
Any help to this problem would be much appreciated!
Chris
