How to unstick a jammed CD/DVD drawer????

[Phy]

I searched but couldn't find a solution here. I tried restarting and holding down the eject button, but no joy.
I have an older Mac Pro tower with double CD/DVD drives.
Any ideas I should try?
Thanks in advance,
Phy

[M>B>]

Hold the mouse button down on startup or restart, that used to work?

Should of asked first, what Mac are we talking about?

There is also, the paper clip trick and the scotch tape trick and possibly others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjkMhvLWiS0

[Phy]

Mac Pro (Mid 2010) Tower
Processor: 2x 2.4 GHZ Quad Core Intel Xeon
Running 10.10.5

[OWC Jamie]

hold the eject key for 10 seconds or until it ejects so
option-eject if it is the second drive


a tray drive should have a paper clip hole under the tray on the left or right side.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Are they Apple optical drives, using the stock connectors?

Disconnect the power and data cable to the one that works. Now try the eject/mouse button down. Do you hear anything? Does it show up in the System Info? Is there a disc in it, or is it just not opening?

[PeterW]

Is this something you want to screw around with or something you need working now? CD/DVD burners are $20 or less new from Newegg. If the data and power cables are securely connected and the drive doesn't work, dump it and get on with your life.

[Onamuji]

Phy wrote:
I searched but couldn't find a solution here. I tried restarting and holding down the eject button, but no joy.
I have an older Mac Pro tower with double CD/DVD drives.
Any ideas I should try?
Thanks in advance,
Phy

Silly questions:

1. Does one drive-tray eject normally while the other does not?

2. If so, then are you certain that you have an optical drive in the second/non-working-optical-drive bay?

[raz]

PeterW wrote:
Is this something you want to screw around with or something you need working now? CD/DVD burners are $20 or less new from Newegg. If the data and power cables are securely connected and the drive doesn't work, dump it and get on with your life.

Does this model have SATA or PATA optical? The latter are almost impossible to find. I've given up and just use $30 portables until they fail.

[PeterW]

2010 MPs have SATA optical drives.

[michaelb]

It is such a blast from the past to have a Mac question like this. In addition to the official options using the keyboard and the paperclip, my memory is that sometimes with my old original imac I would pick it up, turn it upside down, and shake it (the disk would get stuck "over" the tray, and that could dislodge it and get it to release).