New external CD drive, cannot open

Additional question, why are there two separate USB connections and are both required. There is very little in the "doc" Paper, mostly windows stuff.

do you know where the drive shows up in the filesystem? Sounds like the default mount point is in a placeholder with only sudo privileges. Should be able to change mount point with mount manager. Give it a dynamic mount point and it should work.

I looked around and I could not find the default mount point. Or any thing on mount point. I will wait and see is someone has something I can do. And why does it have two cables running into USB. Maybe one of the is connecting to the computer for information and the other gets power from the computer. I haven't tried it on my laptop but I may just do it. thanks
Pepe

Could you run command:
   lsusb
and provide ID of your CD drive.

I am afraid I have been spoiled by Windows and Mac. Terminals turn me off terminally. Is there anything in GUI? When Ubuntu is able to do that, they will be flooded with users. Yes, I know, impossible. Thanks
Pepe

Using Ubuntu/Linux implies that you will have to get to know use of terminal and commands a bit better, even if not all the time.

I have had similar, but not identical problem.

With the new external CD drive plugged into USB port... In the system drop-down menu, I would then: check in Disk Utility - what drives are listed? Are they mounted? Check in System Monitor - the last tab should show the drives you have available.

In Places, select Home on the drop-down menu, then click on the arrow that points up - you'll probably find that the next-up containing folder shows only one folder with your name on it. Click on the up pointing arrow at the top of the window again. You should get a bewildering array of folders - do not tinker, but just open the one marked "Media". Is your CD drive listed, or is a folder given with the location code fro the CD drive? Trying to open that will either activate the CD drive or give you the same message as before.

To carry out an action with permission when none is offered you need to use terminal.
Open Gnome-Terminal. Type in the letters "ls" only and press enter - you see your folders and files listed. Type in "cd .." and press enter. Type in "ls" and enter - named home container folder listed. Type in "cd .." and enter again. Type "ls" and enter - you see all those bewildering folders listed in terminal. To open the Media folder, you will need to type "cd Media" and enter. List contents again. To carry out any action that requires permission, type "sudo" then the command. (By the way, cd in lowercase means change directory, but I guess we all knew that).

For a list of Linux Commands and their divinatory meanings, just type "xman" in terminal. The little window that pops up has slightly unorthodox clicking and scrolling, but a little experimentation will soon give the hang of it. Perhaps I'm just an unorthodox teacher, but to have learnt good typing helps, and no amount of mindless typing can be a substitute for the mind of meditation.

What is special about a new CD - you should know - by the way, if anyone tries to steal your hard drive(s) blame them for my screen problem; I might need a new one.

Maybe the guy needs a driver that works with Linux not Windows or has a mini USB hard drive not a CD - why use the provided two USB leads if you don't need to plug into two computers simultaneously?