Removable media (including CDs, DVDs and others) can refuse to eject via the normal Mac OS X methods — pressing the keyboard eject key; using the Command-E keyboard combination; selecting the item in the Finder and clicking the Eject button next to its name; dragging the item to the trash; or pressing the F12 key.
A number of methods can be applied to help coax media out of an optical drive in such a situation. Before applying these methods, however, note that busy disks (either startup disks or disks with an open file) should not be ejected and will not using any of the aforementioned standard processes. As such, be patient with a disk that will not eject immediately. Sometimes a disk continues to be identified as busy for several seconds after any contained files are not in use, and waiting a few moments then re-attempting the ejection is successful.
Eject Key
Surprisingly enough, if you’ve got a stuck CD, chances are that you’ll be able to remove it if you hold down the Eject key (F12 on older or non-Apple keyboards) on startup. May take a few tries, but this will usually work.
Disk Utility
The first and simplest method, if you only want to unmount a single volume on the disk, is to use Disk Utility, located in /Applications/Utilities. In Disk Utility, simply select the volume you want to unmount and click Eject.
Mouse Button
In some cases holding down a connected mouse button at startup will cause a misbehaving optical drive to eject its media. Unfortunately, this method will not work if you are using a Bluetooth keyboard.
Also, for Xserve users, make sure that the machine is unlocked (using the included allen wrench) before holding down the mouse key during startup.
Open Firmware
If you have a PowerPC Mac that will not startup properly and has a stuck disc, try booting into Open Firmware by holding down Command, Option, O key and F key during startup. After booting into Open Firmware, type the command eject-cd. Type the command boot, to exit and boot the system.
This will not work on Intel based Mac’s because they do not have an accessible EFI interface.
Terminal
There are two commands that can be used in the Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities) which can be used to force disk ejection:
The first command to try is drutil tray eject. Simply type in this command and press return.
The other method takes a little more work but can work in instances where the first method fails.
- Type the command
drutil listinto the Terminal and press return . This will provide a list of all currently connected removable devices. - Use the command
drutil tray eject 1, the number “1″ should be replaced with whatever drive number you obtained in the first step.
Eject Menu
You can enable another means of ejecting disks by opening the folder /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras and double-clicking the file “Eject.menu”. An eject icon will appear in the menubar that can be used to close and open selected optical drives.
If you no longer want the Eject menubar item, hold down the command key while clicking and dragging the icon out of the menubar space
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