Catalina The program can't find any usable optical drives.

[siobhanellis]

Hi,

I know this has been reported before, and I've looked through the various options. There was one with some protection software (Not in my case). Another with a faulty SATA connector. Not in my case.

I have a USB drive. It will mount ALL CD's,a ll DVD's (So far) and some Blu-Rays. However, that is via the OS.

MKV gives the can't find a usable optical drive.

If the OS does mount it, then I can navigate to the files just fine.

I tried debug, this is what I get:

Debug log started at Wed Jun 17 02:48:44 2020 , written by MakeMKV v1.15.1 darwin(x64-release)
Using 262272KB for read cache.
001005:0000 MakeMKV v1.15.1 darwin(x64-release) started
001004:0000 Debug logging enabled, log will be saved as /Users/siobhan/MakeMKV_log.txt
001003:0020 DEBUG: Code 0 at G5m2KHA$T0q*8h:29395655
001003:0020 DEBUG: Code 0 at G5m2KHA$T0q*8h:29395655
001003:0020 DEBUG: Code 117637420 at =RA@ck-0X;DRc(zR:121263521
001003:0020 DEBUG: Code 0 at =RA@ck-0X;DRc(zR:29394965
001003:0020 DEBUG: Code 0 at pGp4BIsT_#;.6>d:121263245
005042:0000 The program can't find any usable optical drives.

This is what I get from the System Report:

BD ROM BC-5500A :

Product ID: 0x1040
Vendor ID: 0x13fd (Initio Corporation)
Version: 1.06
Serial Number: 0000000000000000W
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/s
Manufacturer: Initio
Location ID: 0x14600000 / 2
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 2
Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

[Woodstock]

The key is to find out why Catalina is telling MakeMKV there is no optical drive. When you mount the disk, you make it part of the file system, which gives MakeMKV a view of the disk contents, but you also prevent MakeMKV from manipulating the drive directly, so it cannot bypass much of the copy protection.

[siobhanellis]

Yes, thanks for that. I did realise that.

The question is, how do I do that?

[joepogy]

Hello,
i know there is a lot of posts that ask the same question and I have been reading a lot of them. there seems to be no solution.

i have a Macbook pro 15" there are no optical drives in this laptop. i have used MakeMKV for awhile now. works GREAT!! i love this app. now that i installed the 15.1 version i am getting the same issue as everyone. it can't find drives. my question how did it work before when there are no optical drives in a MacBook pro to begin with? i checked setting. i do have full permission. it was perfect before. there was never any drives to begin with. so how did it work before? i tried re-stalling the older version but now it gives that "The program can't find any optical drives" even with the old version.

please let me know how to fix this.

THANK YOU!

[swampdaddy]

Is there a problem with Catalina?

[mike admin]

Is there a problem with Catalina?

Not that I know of. MakeMKV (all versions) should just work on Catalina.
1.15.2 has a bug when it could (rarely) crash when changing settings. But that's about it.

[Lovely Rita]

No issues with Catalina, here.

[siobhanellis]

Mike,

how can we find out what is stopping makemkv from seeing the CD drive?