iMac no longer reading/playing CDs

It sounds like hardware. Is it still under warranty?

Apple uses a cheap drive in their computers. When mine went out in my Mac Mini I just bought an external drive.

" iMac no longer reading/playing CDs"

Happened to my iMac, also no writing to CDRs. Needs a new disc drive.

Thanks for the replies - Mingles, no it is long out of the warranty period (2008). From the comments from Tan43 and Lowrider57 it seems that my best is to forget the idea of repairs and just get the disc drive.

The drives in iMacs, Macbooks and most laptops from other manufacturers are designed for small size, not durability. It can be replaced but as Tan43 suggests, a better, cheaper alternative is to get an external drive, especially with an iMac where portability isn't an issue.

The apple store is willing to put a new drive in my Mac mini (2009) for $80. I've decided we don't use the cd drive enough to warrant getting it replaced.

S7horton - that seems pretty reasonable to me but it scares me to think of what might happen to my music files (iTunes artwork, etc.) if the repair guy screws something up.

I am perfectly capable of screwing things up on my own without outside help!
LOL!

Puerto - that does seem like a reasonable price for replacing a disc drive and the
replacement of it shouldn't put your music library at risk since those files are on
your hard drive.

And you have your music library and all your other files backed up in at least two
other places as well, right, just in case?

I want to emphasize Sfar's recommendation for backup. If you don't have a system in place, you need one. It's a fact that hard drives eventually die. OS X's built in Time Machine is an excellent choice. You'll need an external drive to make it work. Here's a link to the set up instructions: Mac Basics: Time Machine. By default, TM backs up every hour whether anything changes or not. This is totally unnecessary for a music server and it taxes the system. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't offer an easy way to change that frequency, but there is a nice piece of free software that allows you to make changes: TimeMachineEditor. Note: it only works with OS X 10.7 and 10.8.

Sfar/Mingles - Thank you for those comments - I will definitely check out the links. I do have my music backed up on two external HDs and could not agree more that redundant backup is a requirement.