Help with iMac/El Capitan issues please

[Repairman]

I want to archive some family pix to DVD's from an iMac running El Capitan.
When I plug in the DVD drive usb no icon appears on the desktop. Not sure whether it is the new drive or a compatibility issue. Secondly, will I need to buy third party burning software like Toast. Mac are managing to annoy me more and more with their dumping of 'old hat' useful functions in favour of pathetic user interface controls that irritate the hell out of me.

[klev]

Re: Help with iMac/El Capitan issues please

I haven't tried this on El Capitan, as I haven't used a dvd in some time. Apple mentions that a disk should show up when you insert one in the drive. It doesn't mention the dvd drive itself.

I have experienced other issues with El Capitan. They changed a bunch of library permissions, which broke a number of installations for me (LaTeX, OpenCV, scipy, and a bunch of stuff I installed via brew).

My problems were due to certain permissions changes that came with the rootless feature. I doubt that's the issue in your case, but you're likely to see a lot of complaints that relate to that feature.

As for fixing it, I would start by checking disk utility. See if it shows up there. It's much more reliable than the desktop icons. If you don't see it there, open a terminal. My solution was going to be a bit sloppier than this one. Here's one on stackexchange. Use the code in the accepted answer under the "Edit:" section. It's not dangerous. sed just replaces text, in this case irrelevant characters. Grep is basically a search function.

If you don't see your device listed there, it means it couldn't handshake with your system. If your system can't pick it up, then there's nothing you can do. Buying toast wouldn't affect that. Check the manufacturer's site for El Capitan issues if you haven't already. A lot of things were updated for El Capitan due to the rootless change.

[Repairman]

Re: Help with iMac/El Capitan issues please

Thank you Klev. in the end I chickened out, returned the drive and bought the Mac SuperDrive which worked straight out of the box. Undoubtably Apple's intention