Dr. Mac's OS X Tip-of-the-Day 
Dr. Mac: A dozen ways to eject or unmount a recalcitrant CD or DVD...
By BOB LEVITUS
It seems there are more and more people reporting problems getting discs to
pop out of some optical drives. I know I have to coax a disk to eject or a
disk image to unmount using brute force every so often. And so I thought it
would be nice to collect all the different ways to eject/dismount/open the
drive tray/drive/slot.
So, because I've never seen it collected in one place before, here is the
Dr. Mac semi-definitive list of ways to eject or open an optical disk drive
tray or slot.
Add an Eject button to the Toolbar (View->Customize Toolbar) in Finder
windows and use it to eject CD's).
Use the Eject key if your keyboard has one.
Drag the disc to the Trash.
Use the F12 key (10.1 and later). (You have to press and hold it for
about 2 seconds. It's supposed to prevent you from accidentally opening the
tray, but I do it when reaching for the backspace key all the time...)
Use the eject button, menu item, or keyboard shortcut in iTunes, Disk
Utility, Toast, or any program that has an Eject Disc command.
Poking a straightened out paperclip in a drive's manual eject hole (if
it has a manual eject hole; many don't these days) unlatches the drive and
should let you pull the drawer open.
If the computer is not responding:
Start up from Mac OS OS 9.2 and follow the options in the 9.2 section.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25345
Restart the computer and hold down the mouse button when you hear the
chime.
Hold down Option and reboot to launch the OF Startup Manager. Use its
eject option if you can.
During startup, press and hold the Command-Option-O-F key combination
to enter Open Firmware, type "eject cd" in lower case letters, then hit
return.
And, of course, there are a variety of eject helper applications you can
find at MacUpdate or wherever fine shareware is available.
Believe it or not most of those came from a single Apple Knowledgebase
article:
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver) & (QuickSilver 2002): How to Open the CD/DVD Tray
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25345
The paper clip trick is shown in great detail in these two articles:
iMac: Resetting the CD-ROM Eject Mechanism
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30910
and
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver) and (QuickSilver 2002): How to Eject a Disc From
the DVD or CD Drive
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88215
So, today's tip is that it pays to use the Apple Knowledgebase. As an added
bonus I threw in a brief list of all the ways I know of to eject a CD or
DVD.
If you know other ways... send 'em in. If there are enough good ones not
found here I'll update the list and send it around again.
To discuss this tip (or anything you like) in Dr. Mac's OSXFAQ Forum, click
here:
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=2259
Bob LeVitus is a leading authority on Mac OS and the author of 39 books,
including Mac OS X For Dummies and The Little iTunes Book.
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