Countless Macintosh users have been troubled over the last year by a firmware-corrupting update that Apple Inc. released for Matshita disc drives in MacBook and MacBook Pro computers, SuperDrive 2.1 Update. Possible solutions were premiered, but none proved permanent. I wrote this post to help those affected by this problem; if you’re lucky enough not to be plagued by this issue, skip this post.
My complete personal saga with this issue lives in the Matshita SuperDrive category of this blog. I encourage you to read the buildup to my permanent solution. Through these personal experience and heartache, I have determined that the only solution for this problem is a SuperDrive replacement.
First, a recap of my experience. In August 2007, after applying to SuperDrive 2.1 update, I realized that my MacBook Pro wasn’t recognizing or burning certain types of media. I sent my MacBook Pro in for a drive replacement. Unfortunately, Apple’s technicians only reinstalled Tiger on my computer, which didn’t solve my issue. Although I was outraged, I decided to deal with the issue another time. In late December 2007, I came across a firmware patch for my drive and applied it. It was only a temporary fix, as many users have found out. Come late January 2008, I finally decided to try Apple Support again. After two phone calls, I arranged a drive replacement.
After twelve days, I had my computer back with a brand new HL-DT-ST DVDRW GWA4080MA drive.
I believe that the only solution for this problem is to call Apple Support and demand a SuperDrive replacement. As far as I know, Apple have not officially recognized the SuperDrive problem. Here are my tips:
- Take names of your support agents.
- Stay consistent with your story.
- Don’t admit any firmware hacks, period.
- Don’t take “no” for an answer.
- Call back if you don’t get what you want.
- Mention all of the articles you’ve read online of people saying its a corrupted firmware caused by an Apple update.
- If you’re told to reinstall your operating system, tell the support agent you’ll do so and call back in an hour.
- Email all of Steve Jobs’ email addresses. I’m serious. (steve@mac.com, sjobs@apple.com, sjobs@mac.com). Tell your story and show your disappointment in the company. You’ll likely get contacted by Apple’s Executive Office.
Please leave any thoughts and experiences in the comments. I hope every last person affected by this issue gets his or her SuperDrive replaced.
Mr. Mondello,
Thanks very much for helping so many with the firmware/superdrive problem. People like you, who help simply because they can, are truly the bright side of humanity. That’s isn’t blowing smoke. It’s a fact.
I am in Iraq so taking care of problems like this on my own is a necessity. (As you probably know, there are no Apple stores in Baghdad.)
I tried to run the command as you instructed but the command, ./simple_flash 0 UJ857-KBVB-MBP-rpc1.dat, returned “open for read error”.
Do you know what this means or what I may have done wrong?
Your solution worked for a lot of people. Many expressed their gratitude on the Apple forums. When I saw it I hoped it would solve the issue for me. This last step may be all I need.
Thank you for you help if you can offer any.
Rob Crimmins
I wish there were an easier way, but this seems to be the only solution. Thanks for posting your thoughts and advice here.
Rob, I don’t know what that error means. Did it return that error instantly or after a period of time?
Also, I just want to reiterate that the firmware wasn’t my solution. I credited the author of the software in my original post.
Rabid Biscuit, no problem. Good luck.
Hey Ricky, did Apple foot the bill for a drive replacement? I have the same problem and it is so aggravating to have a “nice” computer that can’t even read or write discs! I have been trying to contact Apple and get them to do my replacement for free since my computer worked before the update, and after their “automatic updates” it was busted.
Ironically – the only 2 discs (out of hundreds) that it has been able to read are Microsoft Office 2004 and Office 2008. Go figure
. Maybe I should call redmond and try to convince them why I (poor college student) should have them help “save me” from terrible product support?
Hey Travis, I’m glad you stopped by!
Apple footed the bill, yes, but I have AppleCare.
Have you emailed Steve Jobs?
Hi, i seem to have the same problem :[
every time i try to watch a dvd or put ANY CD in the drive, it spins, stops, spins, and spits it back out.
I’ve been concidering a replacement drive… but the thing is my warranty must be over now… and i’m just a poor student. x.x i dont have the money to pay for a $600 replacement. any tips? :[
Same problem here…!
After 1 year, my intel iMac stop reading disks, neither CDs or DVDs… It just makes a lot of noises, spins, stops, noises again… and then, just like everybody else in this forum, it spits the disk out.
Apple user forum is full with complains like these… but I think they just don’t give a rat’s *ss…
And $600 for a replacement! They have to be kidding us!
Hey Lionel, thanks for stopping by.
My experience has involved MacBook and MacBook Pro drives. I haven’t heard of similar problems with iMac drives, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I don’t have any information to offer you, really.
Good luck!
Actually, the Apple forums are full of people complaining about the superdrives in their intel iMacs (17″, 20″, 24″) (All of them have the same common problem: Matshita drives)
Unfurtunately, my iMac was 14 months old when my drive failed and I didn’t get the extended guarantee plan…
So I’m still looking for a solution, cause I’m not a really great friend of external drives…
Thanks anyway, I think if there’s an option for MacBooks, maybe there’s still hope for us iMac owners.
Lionel, I’m sorry to hear that that’s the case. I really don’t have much to tell you other than send that magic email to Steve Jobs that I detailed in this post.
Good luck. Please let me know how it turns out for you.
It’s been a month since I wrote an email to all possible Steve Jobs addresses, and still no luck… not a single response from Apple.
I even wrote to addresses such as support@apple.com or customerservice@apple.com, since there is NO support email address in Apple website!!!
What I’m really interested now is getting the physical specs of the new iMac (3Ghz) superdrives, in order to know if is it possible to replace my Matshita superdrive with one of the new Pioneer ones…
Any help would be appreciated
Lionel, that’s really awful that you haven’t received any responses from Apple yet. Unfortunately, I don’t have any advice to offer you at this point.
In finding out the specs on the SuperDrive in the new iMac, I’d ask around on the Apple Forums.
Good luck!
Hi there,
I’m Bogdan from Romania and I have same problem as you. Unfortunatelly my macbook pro is out of the warranty and I tried all the tricks I could imagine in order to make apple to change my superdrive for free. My macbook was bought last year in US by a friend of mine. I also tried to fix the unit while travelling (tried at Apple in Austria, also in Netherlands). All the apple guys said one thing. If it is still under the warranty we will do the replacement for free. If not, we are sorry, you have to pay. Apple in US said that this replacement will cost me 400$. Apple in Netherlands around 210 euro, and around 215 euro in Austria. Finally I got back to Romania and the estimated cost was around 230 euro.
In the end I found this site: http://www.powerbookmedic.com. I bought the apple superdrive for my 15″ macbook pro for the amazing price of 149.99$. Shipping to Romania was around 60$. So with a total of 213$ I have a new apple superdrive (much faster and better than the one that came on my macbook).
I am not telling you that is a real solution cuz you need to pay for it, but so far, is the cheapest one I could find.
Hope this will be helpfull for anyone around this blog.
PS: Apple makes great computers, laptops, hardware and so on, but their support team sucks big time. The guys from Netherlands and Austria didn’t want to admit that they have any ideea of the Superdrive Firmware Update 2.1 and all about it. In Romania they said that it is my imagination till I got my macbook to them and they tried to write a simple cd and they got speachless…Even they know about it, they won’t admit it.
One more thing, please excuse any grammar mistakes or incorrect pharases.
I bet that Apple pust so much pressure on their personel that they would not admit such things. exact the same with some firmware issues I was having. My imac’s optical drive started failing a few weeks after the one – year guarantee period. still having problems. do not know what to do know, the store tells me I should let them repair, but that is too expensive. they sell those drives also, but I do not trust the matsushitas anymore !
@bampi: I wish I could offer you more help, but good luck!
@Jimi: I’d never trust another Matshita drive, ever. I hate this situation and I wish you luck as well.
thanks Richard.
well, a week ago I bought a Plextor px-608 and replaced it. works okay now, but still more sensitive than any old school drive. hmmz…
I guess you just can’t win with optical media these days?
I recently had the same problem, the superdrive will not write to or read any media except for store bought DVD’s.
I have contacted Apple support and was put through to management. I was told I would get a brand new drive to replace mine and it would all be for FREE!!!
I didn’t even have to beg them, they offered the replacement superdrive straight away and were very very helpful!
Thanks for the tips! I read those before phoning Apple Support, so I would recommend everyone with this same issue to phone Apple Support.
MJ – UK
Oh just to point out, my macbook warranty ran out a few months ago, but they still offered the replacement, all parts and labour for free.
I have a core 3 duo 15″ MBP – 2.33ghz
I have just had the same issue – to be honest – not sure how long it has been going (don’t burn alot) on but would not burn and would not read CD/DVD-Rs although would see commercial music and film DVD’s.
I decided to try a lens cleaning kit prior to doing anything else (I know it sounds obvious and if everyone else has tried this then tell me to bog off) – I used the Maxell cleaning kit (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maxell-CD340-Cd-Lens-Cleaner/dp/B000001OM5/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1236254838&sr=1-4)
It is working a treat now and I must admit that I was blown away that it was something so simple – in my case anyway. Worth splurging the £1.18 to try and see prior to going to extreme lengths.
Spondooly
MJ – Glad it worked out for you!
Spondooly – It’s good to remember that seemingly huge problems may have simple solutions. Thanks for your story!
Matshita drive
the clues in the name isn’t it?
heyreynolds! – Indeed.
I tried a lens cleaning kit but the drive wouldn’t accept it.
now I have this plextor re-branded drive which works ok (sort of) but has some issues with not – ejecting when my computer has been in standby or disk inactive mode. then I have to reboot the imac. quite annoying. I hope the newer machines do not have this crap…
I had the same problem many have described- things were going fine until one day the superdrive wouldn’t detect blank cds, so I couldn’t burn.
I tried a lens cleaner kit we had in the house- it’s a 3m/scotch disc with little brushes on the bottom. Just a couple minutes on the cleaner track and the burner was back up. as mentioned, definitely worth a shot depending on symptoms.
Thanks for the feedback, Adam!
Lens cleaners are great, sometimes.
I have an Imac Intel Core Duo early ‘06, the white one, with Matshita Uj-846 drive. Same thing here. It worked until Apple care ended this summer and now it spits out DVDs the majority of the time. I have cleaned lens, upgraded to a clean install of Snow, repaired disk/permissions, etc, and it still does the same thing. It sporadically will read an old bought DVD, but nothing newer (last 5 years), including all install discs. I never used the superdrive much with DVDs, but CDs I did a lot. It still reads and burns all CDs. It did play only DVD-Rs, but now they all load and show up as “blank DVD”. I guess I’m lucky that I got 3 years out of it, but it is disappointing to see so many similar tales. On a side note, the original hard drive died after only about 15 months, and 2 trips to the Apple store finally got me a new drive with Apple Care. I love my Imac, but I feel a bit cheated on the Superdrive. Thanks for the forum!
I’m sorry you haven’t had a positive experience with Apple on this issue. Companies suck, sometimes.
Suffice it to say, ever since a firmware update a while back, things just never seemed to be “right” with my SuperDrive anymore.
I have two spindles of the exact same CD-R Media, and 75% of the way through them, things got drastically worse. No reads, spitting out discs–even store bought discs and DVD Movies.
Now I have a drive that will only read about 1% of the time.
I went to iFixit.com to rip apart my MacBook and physically clean the laser to no avail. Same problem, and lack of flashing firmware to undo the chaos isn’t helping.
Haven’t written to apple yet, but I’ve never had a drive stop working on me in this way on any computer I’ve owned.
long story, short version – spread the word: I upgraded both my G5 and MBP a few months ago to Leopard, both superdrives subsequently failed. I researched, read here and elsewhere about the firmware issue. I opted not to fuss with hacks and flashing etc., got on the phone w/Apple Customer Relations (as I prepared an email to Steve Jobs), patiently, politely detailed the story. Despite being out of warranty, Apple arranged to have a local Apple tech (Tekserve in nyc) cover a replacement drive in my MBP (on my own w/the G5 as it was too old, but at least I have a working burner and if I really want to put a burner in the G5, it’s only ~$40). Bottom line: contact Customer Relations, be thorough, be polite, ASK.
I’ll be more careful with firmware updates in the future.
Good luck – and thank you Richard Mondello
I have an iMac intel 17″ early 2006 same problem with matshita uj-846. Two month ago I’ve got apple replace the lcd screen (vertical lines issue) for free. Tomorrow I’ll call apple for the superdrive issue; with luck I’ll got it replaced for free like the lcd.
The secret is to call apple service. Apple record customer calls to control its employers.
Well I’ll correct myself; english is not my language
. I said `employers’ when I meant `employees’.
i have a macbook pro 2.16 intel. it has a problem reading some dvd’s but not others. i was just trying to install new software that had multi dvd’s. disk 1 would not read at first then it read it after a few tries. now it refuses to read disk 2. only 3 more after that… these same disks worked fine installing it on my G5 Tower.
I have a MPB Pro and have developed the same SuperDrive failure reading DVD-R Blank disks since upgrading to OSX10.6. It appears to me that Apple is starting to follow Microsoft in releasing defective software updates.
Does anyone have a solution for the drive failure as I tried re-flashing the drive with Ben11 fix but still encounter the same problem.
Nothing seams to work and OSX10.6 will not support a large number of external DVD drives ether.
I am getting ready to move 100% to Linux and the hell with MS or APPLE.
I’ve called Apple without exit. So, following the experience of others I’ve bought a ‘used’ ‘matshita uj-875s’ in ebay and change it myself.
I use linux and the drives behaves identically so the problem (at least in my case) is probably the hardward. Till now the new driver works well in the sense I can mount and read all cds dvds but linux console report some errors reading some sectors with verbatim cds in the same way the old drive did at the first time. Common sense says the new matshita will end like the old. I could buy a pionner but people reports problems with them too.
Don’t expect quality today. Money is a serpent biting its own tail.