#Mac dvd drive external how to#
#Mac dvd drive external install#
#Mac dvd drive external driver#
#Mac dvd drive external full#
#Mac dvd drive external pro#

Optical drives like CD and DVD drives read and write data from optical discs by means of a laser. As laptop designs have become ever thinner and lighter, eliminating DVD players and optical drives became one of the easiest ways to drop weight and free up additional space. Now, they are all but an afterthought on many current models, especially among laptops and notebooks. It wasn’t that long ago that optical drives such as CD-ROM readers and DVD players were among the most sought-after features in a desktop or laptop computer. High-end external optical drives can include software that improves reliability when reading discs that have fingerprints or minor scratches. As there’s no sign that built-in internal optical drives will be making a comeback anytime soon, especially in laptops and notebooks, and as tablets and tablet convertibles become more popular and more compatible with external USB accessories, there’s never been a better time to buy an external DVD drive. Many people have years of backups on DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs, not to mention pictures, media, and older application installers. DVDs are still one of the most popular formats for watching movies. The fact that they’re no longer a popular option in today’s computers doesn’t mean external DVD drives, external CD drives, and other optical drives don’t have a place. Compare that to the present, when everything from shareware programs to OS releases can be downloaded to your computer’s SSD drive, while many programs are web- or cloud-based.

#Mac dvd drive external install#

While it seems to work fine in many cases, some users ended up with their Mac not booting any more afterwards.Buying guide for best external DVD drivesīefore broadband internet became widespread, optical discs like CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs were the best way to install large programs, software packages, and operating systems onto your computer’s hard drive. There is also a simpler method which consists of just typing in a terminal:

#Mac dvd drive external full#

Jump through to the post to read the full answer, but here is the ‘quick fix’ that might work for you. In fact Luz provides two options, one it seems is more reliable than the other. It’s a little more complicated than the steps outlined above, so if you’ve only got one internet enabled device you might want to print out/copy down the instructions before you get started!

#Mac dvd drive external how to#

If you’re running Mac OS X El Capitan (10.11) or later you’ll need to check out this updated post from Luz, on how to successfully tackle the same issue.

#Mac dvd drive external driver#

The driver recognizes a boot parameter named “mbasd” (Mac Book Air Super Drive), which sets a flag in the driver which both overrides the check for the MBA and also tweaks something related to USB power management (the Superdrive probably needs more power than regular USB allows). What is the file we just edited? Thanks to the Luz from the blog you can once again be illuminated…Īpparently, Apple engineers had the need to test the Superdrive with non-MacBook Air computers themselves, so the driver already has an option built-in to work on officially unsupported machines! All you need to do is enable that option, as follows: Restart and plug in your Superdrive and you should be good to go. On line 8, or between the type in ‘mbasd=1’ so it looks like this… I use Text Wrangler which is both excellent and free. Open the file with Text Edit or any other text editor.

You can get to the hidden Library folder by holding down ALT when clicking on the ‘Go’ menu in a Finder window. Mac HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ Navigate to this file (click image for larger view) and back it up by making a copy of it to your Desktop in case anything goes wrong. How To Make a Mac Laptop Recognise an External DVD Drive If you follow these steps you’re obviously doing this all at your own risk. External DVD drive functional happiness is all thanks to this blog for the fix. I’ve not tested this on OS X Yosemite, but I know it works on Mountain Lion and it should work on Mavericks and in most other OS X versions I believe.

#Mac dvd drive external pro#

This week I had to get around this exact scenario, as it appears the internal drive is failing on my 17″ Macbook Pro (sigh), but the solution is actually very simple. If you’ve ever tried to plug in an Apple Superdrive (external DVD drive) into a Macbook Pro or other Mac laptop with an internal DVD drive, you may have struggled to get the laptop to recognise the external drive and therefore be able to use it at all.

How To Use A Superdrive on a Mac Laptop With An Internal DVD Drive