Q When I inserted the third of a 12 audio CD series in my iMac, I got a message that the disk was unreadable. When I tried the disk in my MacBook’s slot-loading optical drive, I got no message, but now the disk cannot be ejected. How can I get it out?

A Unfortunately CDs need to become mounted by the system before you can readily eject them using the keyboard. If there is a problem with the CD that prevents it from being mounted properly, then ideally OS X complains and ejects it, but sometimes the problem seems to leaves OS X in a perplexed state, and it just does not know what to do – leaving the disk stuck in the drive.

With tray-loading drives you can usually get the tray open, but disks tend to get stuck in slot-loading drives. The most reliable way of ejecting a CD or DVD is to restart and hold the mouse button down through the restart process, until the disk is spat out.
If that does not work, it normally means that there is a mechanical problem in ejection – either there is a fault with the mechanical ejection mechanism, or the disk has become physically stuck, perhaps because it has sticky labels on it.

In those cases, the only answer is to get an Apple engineer to dismantle the drive and remove the disk that way. For these reasons you should never use mini or irregularly-shaped disks in a slot-loading drive.

Updated from the original, which was first published in MacUser volume 26 issue 10, 2010.