Ejecting a DVD on an external iMac drive - Apple MacBook PC Notebook

Basically the read-write head is out of alignment. These drift out with use. Unfortunetly they are not economical to repair these days and just need to be replaced.
Usually you find a commercial dvd might work for a while but eventually that on't but a cd will. If you have any commercial cd's pop one inand see. The dvd requires much more accuracy but the cd is quite coarse so it works longer. Eventually it too will stop working.
At this point you have two choices, get the dvd drive replaced with a apple configurred drive or just use a external dvd or even blueray external usb drive. Those will be much cheaper and won't require any downtime or tech fees.

You also could try

Opening up the terminal application found in the utilities folder within your applications folder and then type in drutil tray eject and then press return

Tilt your imac so that the DVD drive is pointing downwards and press the eject key and hopefully the effect of gravity will allow the DVD to fall out.

One other way to do it which I have used recently but IT CAN BREAK THE DVD DRIVE, so only use it as a last resort. Get a thin piece of plastic and put a piece of double sided tape on it then with the imac switched off insert the piece of plastic with the tape facing down in relation to the screen. Put it in about half an inch and you may be able to drag the dvd out.

Hope this helps.

The optical drive has separate hardware for reading CD-disks and for reading DVD-disks.
So, "half" of the drive has failed. Replace the drive, since that will be less-expensive than an attempt at a repair.

get a new drive or new mac i say new drive

To eject a CD/DVD that is not recognized by your computer, boot up while holding down the eject button on your keyboard, and continue to hold down eject until the disk ejects.

If this does not work, hold down your mouse button while booting up in the same way.

If neither of these work, open Terminal and type in the following:

drutil tray eject

If your disc does still not eject, your optical drive likely needs repair.

The iMac (Slot loading) computer's disc eject mechanism is electrical instead of mechanical. To eject a CD-ROM disc at startup that contains system software, press the mouse button until the computer ejects the disc. If the disc does not contain system software, wait for the iMac to start up and drag the disc icon to the Trash.

If either of these steps fails to eject the disc, push the drive's manual eject button with a small, blunt object like a paper clip. This button is located to the right of the CD/DVD slot as shown in Figure 1. The computer must be turned on to eject a disc in this manner.


Figure 1 Manual eject button

Once the disc is ejected, it extends just beyond its center hole so you can remove it from the drive. If the disc fails to eject, while holding in the paper clip, use another CD to gently push against the inserted CD. This gentle pressure may help to release the inserted CD.

Important: After ejecting the disc with the manual eject button, you must restart the iMac in order for the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive to work.
DONT FORGET TO VOTE

not if you don't want to ruin the warranty.
maybe a certified repair shop can replace the drive for you.

Try cleaning the lens or the drive with a cleaning disk

most likely, your dvd burner lens is burnt out(they make the darn things out of plastic!). Just happened on mine. you have to either replace the drive or get an external. There are do it yourself instructions on Apple's website for replacing the drive.

Not all drives are compatible...must be slot loading and I read that it has to be set to master so you can potentially boot from CD's in this drive.

try turning the external drive off & wait a minute then turn it back on.if it works just drag what you want to transfer from your mac to the external drive and it should copy it to the drive.