OWC Mercury Pro optical drive stopped working with Sonoma

[RodeoLinebacker]

Since I installed MacOS Sonoma, my OWC Mercury Pro optical drive (CD/DVD/Blu-ray) can no longer mount any discs. I've tried this with both an M1 iMac and the latest Macbook Pro, both on Sonoma 14.1.2. OWC has no idea why this is happening and LG (the drive manufacturer) is equally clueless. I've looked in the security settings but can't find anything pertaining to this drive, which shows up on the system report on the USB list.

Behavior: Drive opens, disc is inserted, drive closes, tries to spin up the disc several times then finally gives up and ejects it. Besides trying this drive on two different machines, I've tried multiple discs but nothing works. Does anyone have an idea what might be going on?

 

[Bigwaff]

Are you using a USB-A > USB-C adapter? You should try a different adapter.

 

[DeltaMac]

I have 3 different Macs, running Sonoma, and each have internal optical drives.
None function. There's no response when inserting a CD/DVD disc, and System Information does not show that an optical drive is available.
Well, yes, those 3 are using Sonoma with an OCLP install, but all other hardware appears to be ready to use.
I have read that there is no software support in Sonoma for optical drives.
Can anyone say that is incorrect (I hope...)?

 

[flowrider]

^^^^I'm using an Asus BW-16D1X-U Optical Drive with my 7,1 NcMP and no issues. The drive is recognized and I can burn, download from and play CD, DVD, DVD DL, and BD. No issues.

Do you folks have the CDs & DVDs page in System Settings?

Lou

 

[martens]

I am late to this discussion, but I'm having this exact problem with OWC BluRay drive. It does show in System Properties for USB3 bus but that's it. 3 different Macs.

I do see CDs & DVDs settings (when the drive is powered up and connected), none are set to Ignore, yet nothing happens.

Sent a message to OWC, will report what they tell me.

I connected to Windows 11 system, it recognized the drive, but didn't detect that there was a disk in there. I will have to try that again, surely that should work?

My Sony CD/DVD burner external drive works as expected.

 

[martens]

OWC is looking at it (again it seems).

The menu bar widget (Show eject in menu bar) works.

There must be some logging associated with connecting/disconnecting, open/close, but I have not been able to discover any.

 

[halledise]

y'all still using DVDs and CDs?
wowsers …

 

[flowrider]

^^^^YUP👍🏻

Lou

 

[flowrider]

removed

 

[martens]

y'all still using DVDs and CDs?
wowsers …

Ya gotta problem with that?

Looks like some hardware issue, never had optical drive fail, and this is the newest one I have around.

 

[halledise]

Ya gotta problem with that?

Looks like some hardware issue, never had optical drive fail, and this is the newest one I have around.

not really.
merely expressing surprise at ongoing usage of outdated tech is all …

 

[gilby101]

Ya gotta problem with that?

Just ignore him/her.

 

[MacHeritage]

Are you all still having issues with this or does it come and go with Sonoma? This is very concerning to me if I got a new Mac and can't even read or burn discs with LG burners and OWC.

not really.
merely expressing surprise at ongoing usage of outdated tech is all …

Optical media is more stable than any other digital storage medium for long term self storage and is also WORM for write-once discs, so no one can just write over the precious data you are storing.
This outdated tech has not been superseded by anything yet. If so, I would love to know about it.

Also, movies still have the highest quality and look the best from disc. Plus, no Internet, no problem.

 

[MacCheetah3]

It’s not a general USB optical drive support problem. My long discontinued LG GP30 slim, portable DVDRW drive seems to work fine.



DVD Player launched immediately with no playback issues.

P.S. As fragile as they are in their own way, I prefer the tray loading drives. The insert/eject disc mechanism on every slot loading drive has eventually failed in my devices.