How to disable an optical drive

The SuperDrive in my PowerBook failed recently. Attempts to query the drive from System Profiler (disc burning), mount disks, or interact with the drive in any way cause the calling application to just hang in an unkillable (E/zombie) process state.

I'm planning on buying a new drive, but in the meantime, I figured there must be some way to disable the drive from software. I didn't want to screw up my machine just by accidentally opening up the System Profiler, and I didn't want to take apart the laptop and disconnect it. I couldn't find any documentation on how to disable the inernal drive via Open Firmware's nvram settings, but I did find one approach that actually worked: removing the IODVDStorageFamily extension (IODVDStorageFamily.kext bundle) from /System -> Library -> Extensions.

I simply created a new folder called DisabledExtensions and dropped it there. There's also an IOCDStorageFamily extension, presumably if you're using a plain-old CD-ROM drive, you'd want to nuke that one.

After moving the extension, I rebooted and confirmed that the drive no longer showed up (nor did it cause hangs) when opening System Profiler or other applications that want to interact with the optical drive.

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How to disable an optical drive
Authored by: digitol on Fri, Dec 9 2005 at 11:22AM PST

I wonder if just using the kext unload command in the terminal would do it. ?? Hmm. interesting hint, thanks, this could also be good to secure your computer in lab setups.

How to disable an optical drive
Authored by: spodie on Fri, Dec 9 2005 at 11:08PM PST

Maybe I'm just being Mr. Obvious here, but wouldn't it be a heck of a lot easier to shut the machine down, open it up, and disconnect the ATA cable from the drive? Beats messing around with the OS.

How to disable an optical drive
Authored by: vonleigh on Sat, Dec 10 2005 at 2:27AM PST

How obvious, how could he have missed that taking apart an iBook or PowerBook is so much simpler than dragging and dropping a file into a folder.

Oh wait... "and I didn't want to take apart the laptop and disconnect it". Thank you Captain Obvious.

How to disable an optical drive
Authored by: entapple on Sun, Dec 11 2005 at 5:28PM PST

That's a powerbook,that's not use to disconnect the CABLE
thx for the author's tips
similar problem ever come to me,
but i didn't solve it,
now 3q for your guide

How to disable an optical drive
Authored by: IamACIMcom on Sat, Jun 28 2008 at 12:20PM PDT

It Did not work for my MacBook Pro, any more Ideas?

How to disable an optical drive
Authored by: spookybathtub on Tue, Jan 27 2009 at 10:37AM PST

Great hint. I tried it just to save battery on my Macbook since I never use the optical drive. But of course, now I need to use the optical drive and I'm having a heck of a time enabling it again. I moved the IODVDStorageFamily.kext back into the proper Extensions folder. Then I did:

sudo chown -R root:wheel IODVDStorageFamily.kext

sudo chmod -R 755 root:wheel IODVDStorageFamily.kext

sudo kextload IODVDStorageFamily.kext

Then I rebooted, and my system still can't see the optical drive. I think I need to somehow load the kext before login every time?

How to disable an optical drive
Authored by: spookybathtub on Tue, Jan 27 2009 at 11:43PM PST

Nevermind, I found the solution. I simply had to plug a flash drive in and the optical drive was immediately recognized.

How to disable an optical drive
Authored by: WaterCooled on Mon, Mar 2 2009 at 3:16PM PST

Just found out how to do this tweak by a more "cleaner" manner : you just need to unload all the kext dependencies of IOCDStorageFamily, then unload IODVDStorageFamily itself :


sudo kextunload IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOSCSIMultimediaCommandsDevice.kext 

sudo kextunload IOBDStorageFamily.kext 

sudo kextunload IODVDStorageFamily.kext 

sudo kextunload IOCDStorageFamily.kext

You can actually see all the dependancies by just looking at the command "kextstat".

How to disable an optical drive
Authored by: apophasis on Sat, Nov 7 2009 at 7:14PM PST

G4 Titanium PB 1Ghz DVI Superdrive. Superdrive failed, eating my hardware test disk. I opened it up and took the disk out. Upon boot, the newly-empty Superdrive started cycling endlessly, annoyingly. Looked online, saw this post. Tried deleting IODVDStorageFamily.kext to no avail; upon restart, drive kept up the annoying cycling. Dragged and dropped IODVDStorageFamily.kext back into System > Library> Extensions. Upon restart, my external Firewire DVD drive is no longer recognized; upon opening DVD Player, I get an error message that IODVDStorageFamily.kext was installed improperly, and I should contact the vendor. Also, no DVD drive recognized.
Oh, boy. So, my Superdrive is cycling endlessly, and I'd like to stop that. I'm fine with opening the PB up and pulling a plug. Which one? Can I remove the Superdrive entirely? I'm assuming not, as the modem and inverter mount on it, but how can I disable it or stop it from spazzing out?
Worse, I cannot now play a DVD from my (recently) working FW DVD drive.
A little help, please! And thanks in advance...

How to disable an optical drive
Authored by: apophasis on Sat, Nov 7 2009 at 7:49PM PST

Okay, I went back in and unplugged the Superdrive, so that's that. And now when I insert a DVD in the FW drive, it shows up in System Profiler, DVD appears on the desktop with the right name... But when I try to play it with DVD player, I get "There was an initialization error. A valid DVD drive could not be found. [-70012]. Help!
Ironically enough, I appear to have disabled my optical drive, all right...

How to disable an optical drive
Authored by: apophasis on Sat, Nov 7 2009 at 9:50PM PST

So DVD Player will not run if the Superdrive is unplugged, despite the fact that you can read the DVD from a Firewire external and open it. So it's a DVD Player problem, at this point. My "Super" drive is physically broken and cycling really annoyingly, so I'd like to unplug it, but can't watch DVD's in DVD Player like that. Maybe another player? Otherwise, issues are solved, sort of.

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