i have been trying to back up my mac. I started with ITunes but when I tried to burn a DVD it came up (eventually) with a error msg saying something along the lines of "laser realignment error". Now when I tried to read a previously burned DVD the mac just re-opens the tray after trying to read the media, but normal commercial dvd's seem to play fine. Any suggestions will be much apprieciated as me and my family have purchased a fair ammount from Itunes store. Cheers.

I would say that your DVD drive (or at least the burning part of it) is dead/broken. So the burning doesn't work, although apparently it can still read fine. You have several options at this point:

  • Get a new SuperDrive and replace it with the current one in your Mac (or fix the old one). If it's still under warranty, Apple will probably do it for free.
  • Perhaps you have another computer with you can temporarily use to network and transfer the data?
  • Buy an external hard drive.

If burning disks isn't something you do very often, then you most likely want to transfer the data to a different computer, or buy an external hard drive. However, if you do like the burning feature in your drive, I would suggest getting it fixed very soon.

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