External DVD Drive Crashes

I purchased an external LaCie DVD drive to watch commercial DVDs on my iMac. Of course, I already discovered I can't use the internal CD drive, nor can I use the Apple DVD Player software to run the external drive as the system refuses to load it.
So, I downloaded VideoLan Client. It sorta works. DVDs crash/freeze in random chapters during playback. Trying to pick up where I left off using VLC chapter forward controls causes more crashes.
Would updating my OS be a solution? Any other solutions?

Peter,Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Here are some alternative choices for playing DVDs.
If the LaCie drive USB or FW?
Tiger is serious improvement over 10.1 (although you may need some more RAM) I'm not sure whether it will cure the DVD player issue? If you still have space (9Gb) on your 40Gb drive you could use Mac the Ripper, and then open the VIDEO_TS file in DVD Player.
mrtotes

Similar Messages

IMac - external DVD drive crashes Aimersoft DVD Ripping program

I am using Aimersoft DVD ripping software (legal version) to make mp4 files out of DVDs. It works fine on the IMac internal DVD drive. But when I try and use an external DVD drive using FW800/400 conversion cable, Aimersoft program keeps crashing.
Any thoughts?

Peter,Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Here are some alternative choices for playing DVDs.
If the LaCie drive USB or FW?
Tiger is serious improvement over 10.1 (although you may need some more RAM) I'm not sure whether it will cure the DVD player issue? If you still have space (9Gb) on your 40Gb drive you could use Mac the Ripper, and then open the VIDEO_TS file in DVD Player.
mrtotes

Starting up an emac using an external dvd drive?

My emac has frozen. I was installing the software update to system 10.4.6 when the machine crashed (not enough HD space? don't know.)
Now, it won't get past the Starting Mac OS X screen.
I figure I need to do a clean install or something drastic, just to rebuilt the system software. I think that will work, but I have a problem:
The 10.4 disks I bought only came in DVDs. My emac only has a CD drive, so I installed the software using an external DVD burner.
I have tried to restart holding down the C key, but it's not starting off the external drive.
I have no idea where the ancient OSX disks (CDs) are that came with the computer, and don't know if it's a good idea to go backwards anyhow.
I know the actual hard drive on the emac is functional, because I was able to make it a target disk to back up the files today.
Any clue how to start up using the external DVD drive and the 10.4 DVD?

Edward Rosenstein,
Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
Had you used patchburn on the external DVD drive?
Does the drive appear as an option using the option key to bring up Startup Manager?
You mention backing up the eMac's hard drive in Firewire Target Disk Mode. The host computer you used for that should show you how much free space there is on the eMac hard drive; you'll need at least 5 to 8 GB free.
If the host computer you used for the Firewire Target Disk Mode backup has a DVD drive, you can use that to install 10.4 onto the eMac while the eMac is connected in target disk mode. If the host computer doesn't have a DVD drive, try moving the external DVD drive to the host, run Patchburn if it's not recognized, and you should be able to install onto the eMac that way.

Boot Windows AND FreeBSD from my MacBook Pro 8,3 using an external DVD drive. I'm considering to remove my DVD-ROM and replace it with an SSD drive. That doesn't seem to work. Why not?

As the title says, I'm attempting to boot off my favorite operating systems, Mac OS X, Windows 7 and FreeBSD from an external DVD drive. However, for some odd reasons, booting the Windows DVD and FreeBSD 9.1 install DVD from the external drive does not seem to work. I was able to create a bootable USB with the Windows installer, but whenever I attempt to do the same with FreeBSD, I only get an error message that says "No bootable device -- press any key to restart." Is this a limitation that Apple deliborately created? If so, why won't Apple let its customers do whatever they please with their computers, considering that customers who want to change the hardware and/or operating systems knows what he is doing, without having to worry about some silly Apple limitations?
If I sound rude, I apologize for that, as no impoliteness is intended from my side.
In advance, thanks. Have a wonderful day, everyone.

That is only partially correct at best.
When you are booting off Windows or any other operating systems that usually don't support EFI (including Windows), your Mac uses something called CSM-BIOS. And as long as that CSM-BIOS implementation on EFI-based Mac do not support booting off from USB (note that Mac OS X Installer works fine when booting from USB), not even a USB Apple SuperDrive which once was an internal drive, there mot definately is something for Apple to fix.
When attempting to install Windows via BootCamp, a somewhat hybrid GTP/MBR table is created. When you boot off the installer disc of the OS you intend to install (i.e. Windows 7, FreeBSD, etc), your Mac might not support the EFI boot option (at least my 2011 17-inch MacBook Pro doesn't support that), so the only way of booting that second OS installer is via the regular BIOS, which Apple's EFI based systems implement as CSM-BIOS.

How do I install Tiger on a G3 iMAC from an external DVD drive?

I want to install Tiger on my PPC G3 iMAC. It is 500MHZ with 512 MB Ram, running 10.3.9. It has a CD drive, but CD version of Tiger is no longer available. I purchased a retail version of Tiger, and, on the advice of the Apple Store personnel, purchased an external DVD drive. It is a USB Lacie drive. My iMAC sees the DVD, but when I click the Install icon, it has a Restart button. Clicking the button restarts for 10.3.9. Same thing happens when I use the "C" key. When I try to assign the DVD drive as the startup drive, it says "ding" and won't assign it. What can I do next?

Take the DVD drive back and exchange it for a Firewire model. You cannot boot the iMac from a USB drive. This is basic information your Apple store personnel should know unless you failed to tell them what Mac model you have.

Can I use USB external DVD Drive to boot up my G4?

My G4 (PCI Graphics) internal drive DVD-ROM is not working, its dead. I want to replace it with an External USB or Firewire Lacie DVD Drive.
According to Apple document http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58606, my computer cant boot up from Firewire devices. I think that means, I wont be able reinstall my Mac OS or install future systems or start my DiskWarrior from the CD. Using a external Firewire DVD Drive. Let me know if I am wrong?
Can I use a USB external DVD Drive to boot up?
G4 (PCI Graphics) 400 mhz, 488Mb Memory, 50GB, 9.2.2 & 10.3.9. USB 1.0 & Firewire 400 Ports
G4 (PCI Graphics) Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Hi, Harold -
Bad news - your G4 (PCI) model can not boot to either a firewire drive nor to a USB drive.
Although the G4 (PCI) models do have native firewire, they (and their cousins the B&W G3) are specifically exempted from firewire booting; there is no workaround for this -
Article #58606 - FireWire Booting
Relatedly, a G4 (PCI) machine can be the Host machine in a Firewire Target Disk Mode setup, but can not be the Target machine.
Article #58583 - Firewire Target Disk Mode
USB booting was introduced first on the G4 (AGP) model, and is not available on earlier Mac models -
Article #58430 - USB Info and Benefits of Dual-Channel USB
The only external drive your G4 (PCI) can be booted to is a SCSI drive - but that requires that the machine have an appropriate SCSI PCI card installed.
Replacing the internal optical drive might be the best choice, particularly for ease of maintenance and OS installing in the future.

External Hard Drive crashed with all songs on it. HELP!!!

Hello. My kids have used my work PC as their itunes playground for over the past year. I added a Lacie external hard drive to help them save thier music and had itunes on it, as well as my pc. The external hard drive crashed and won't communicate with the pc at all so when we bring up itunes on the pc it shows exclamation marks next to almost all of the songs and won't play them. I still have almost all of our music on my ipod, except about 170 songs that they purchased since I last plugged in my ipod, they have their own mini's. I want to know how to get the songs back to my computer. I am afraid if I connect the 60GB ipod to the pc all of our songs will be wiped out since my ipod is on autosync. Can anyone give me a reliable way to get everything back to normal? PLEASE!!!!

Connect your iPod to your computer. If it is set to update automatically you'll get a message that it is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all songs from your iPod. Your iPod should appear in the iTunes source list from where you can change the update setting to manual and use your iPod without the risk of accidentally erasing it. Also when using a lot of the utilities your iPod needs to be enabled for disc use, changing to manual update will do this by default. Check the "manually manage music and videos" box in Summary then press the Apply button: Managing content manually on iPod
Once you are safely connected there are a few things you can do to restore your iTunes from the iPod. If you have any iTMS purchases the transfer of purchased content from the iPod to authorised computers has been introduced with iTunes 7. A paragraph on it has been added to this article:: Transfer iTunes Store purchases using iPod
The transfer of non iTMS content such as songs imported from CD is designed by default to be one way from iTunes to iPod. However there's a manual method of copying songs from your iPod to your Mac. The procedure is a bit involved but if you're interested it's available at this link: Two-way Street: Moving Music Off the iPod
If you prefer something more automated there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve music files and playlists from your iPod, this is just a selection. I use Senuti but have a look at the web pages and documentation for the others too, you'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos and games as well. You can also read reviews of some of them here: Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Senuti Mac Only
iPodRip Mac Only
PodWorks Mac Only
PodView Mac Only
iPodAccess Mac & Windows
YamiPod Mac & Windows
PodUtil Mac & Windows
iPodCopy Mac & Windows
Keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync.

Using Recovery Media on External DVD Drive

Now that I know my internal dvd drive is fried, can I use my recovery media utilizing my external dvd drive?
I have a x205 9800 running Windows 7.
I put the recovery media in the external dvd drive and it still wants to run it from the internal.
I have disabled my internal "mat**bleep**a dvd ram uj-850s". No luck.
Any help would be deeply appreciated.
Thanks
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi Tamkhai,
The USB dvd drive is plugged into my laptop. I am able to get into the boot up area with F12, but it will only allow me to change the order. I put the USB to the top of the list. I restart the computer and it brings up the Toshiba Recovery window. I select OK. It says "Insert Disc 1." I insert disc 1 into the external and then it tries to utilize the internal dvd drive. Even if I disable it or uninstall the dvd drive it still wants to go directly to it.

Installing Windows XP on Lion using external DVD drive

Hi, this is my first time posting on a forum at all, so just keep that in mind when dealing with me.
I have recently attempted to install Windows XP by partitioning my drive using the disk utility (seeing as Bootcamp no longer supports Windows XP installations). The problems start when I boot from the installation disk; an error "no bootable device - insert boot disk and press any key" occurs. I am inclined to believe that this is due to me using an external DVD drive when doing all of this. I am using an external DVD drive because my internal DVD drive has been spoilt and is no longer useable.
Does anyone have a solution for me? It seems that it is not possible to install windows using an external DVD drive.

I am doing this after doing a full wipe of my hard drive and reinstalling lion.
Previously, I had lion, and made a partition using disk utility and booted from the disk (this time it was from my Mac's SuperDrive which was functioning perfectly at this point in time) and finished the installation completely fine. I then used the drivers that were in my Snow Leopard DVD (I have a Snow Leopard DVD from a previous Mac I purchased).
The only difference between then and now is that I am using an external DVD drive.

How do I run system recovery dvd from an external dvd drive?

I am having trouble trying to restore my DV 6000 (dv6915nr) from an external dvd drive. I am aware that this laptop has had several hardware issues, including the loss of use of the internal dvd drive and have tried all the fixes that I could find,including changing filter settings in the registry, changinging the boot order in the bios and even removing the intenal drive. Since none of these fixes worked, I removed the hard drive and installed window 7 Prodessional in a desktop computer. After reinstalling drive in laptop, I installed all the Vista drivers from HP. Computer works fine except for sound card and Nic that failed and have been replaced by USB devices. Simce I am not 100% sure the hardware failures are motherboard failures and not software, I would really like to run my System Restore DVDs that I purchased from HP. And that's where I need help.
I am A Plus and Network Plus certified, so I am pretty sure that I have tried all the obvious soutions. Evedrything turned on, checked the cables, accessed dvd in wimdows and even ran restore disk in a desktop machine to the point that it told me I was trying to restore the wong computer. I downloaded a program called Win To Flash that allows you to copy a setup disk to an external hard drive, but that didn't work. HP restore disk does not have Setup file on it, so it wouldn't copy to drive. Tried just copying the disk to external and that didn't work either. Also tried switching drive letters D and E without any success.
Bios choices are:
USb floppy
ATAPI cd/dvd rom drive
USB diskette on key
Notebook Hard drive
Network Adapter
Original restore partition is long gone.
I would rather restore it with an external Hard drive, not an USB memory stick. I think both would work the same. I do have an USB floppy drive, if there is some way of starting installation from floppies.
Like I said, I really like the computer, even with all its faults, but I would like to restore it to its original Operating System.

Some progress, I got it to try to boot from an external hard drive. Downloaded a program called WINToboot. tried to run it, got as far as formatting my hard drive and might have loaded some kind of boot program. Would not copy my restore disks because they did not have set up program. Copied both restore disks to hard drive and tried to boot laptop. F0 produced choose external hard drive choice. Got "no OS found" error. only choice ctl alt del. I think I am headed in right direction. Just need to know what to load on external hard drive.

I have imported and processed photo's in Lightroom 2 and kept stored files on external hard drive. External hard drive crashed....how do I export photo's from Lightroom when it says 'file not found'?

Folders with photo files are lost due to external hard drive crashing. Processed photo's are still in LR. How can I export from LR to a file (any file) that no longer exists? Help!!!

Well, no backups, the technical term for that is "a problem". I think from this point forward, you need to commit yourself to making regular automated backups of all of your photos and catalog file to different physical disks, no excuses.
Your photos are not stored in Lightroom. However, Lightroom does create "previews", this is what you are seeing, but these are usually smaller and low-quality compared to the originals. There are plug-ins that can extract the previews from Lightroom. One such plug-in is here robcole.com - PreviewExporter

How do I install an amazon external dvd drive to replace a broken internal one in my old macbook?

My old macbook has a broken optical drive inside it. The one that came with it has quit working and the genius at the genius bar said it needed to be replaced. The genius said to get an external one online so I bought the Amazon basics external dvd drive. I can't figure out how to install it and get it to work.

Nothing will show up on the desktop until you put a CD/DVD in it.
Plug it into the FireWire or USB port and turn it on. Put a CD/DVD in it and it should show up on the desktop.

Internal DVD drive is shot. Can I install SL from an external DVD drive?

Hi folks, a quick (well actually a few) questions.
I've had my imac since early '06. It's currently running Tiger, and I'd like to install Snow Leopard. The problem is that the internal DVD drive is shot. It's been occasionally refusing to accept DVDs for a while now, and now it has a DVD stuck in it (not mounted), which I can't get out via terminal, rebooting, or jiggling it (technical term I know).
Now, I'm going to assume that getting apple to replace the DVD drive will be more expensive than just grabbing an external drive, especially as I'll most probably only use it once. The question is, if I grab a cheap external DVD drive, will I be able to install Snow Leopard with it? Or will Tiger not recognise it as a boot drive?
Many thanks,
Chris
p.s. Also, I'm using a cheapo windows style keyboard (will be replacing asap), and I'm wondering if this is why I can't see bootable drives when holing option on startup?

Yes, you can install from an external drive, although I wouldn’t go for a cheap one. There are good, relatively inexpensive, drives out there. And you are going to need that option key to select the install disk as your startup. I believe there is a corresponding key on a PC keyboard, but I don’t know what it is (maybe Alt?). I’m sure someone can jump in here and tell us.

Apple dvd player / external dvd drive issue

i recently bought a LaCie d2 external dvd drive, since my desktop g4 only has an internal cdr drive. I am running osx 10.4.3, which i installed through this dvd drive. yet now, when i put a DVD movie into the drive and try to open Apple DVD Player, it says
"There was an initialization error. A valid DVD drive could not be found. [-70012]"
i know this is a third party drive, but can anyone help me out? pleeeease?

This is to be expected. DVD Player will only work
with an external DVD drive if the Mac has an internal
DVD drive.
However you may overcome this limitation using PlayerPatc
h.
I had the same problem as above (error code [-70012])... I downloaded this patch for my LG external DVD/RW Model GSA-2166D and it worked perfectly... can now play DVDs...
It's people like you who make being part of the mac community a joy!
Now I just need to find a patch to get the Light Scribe to work...
Thanks!
A1005 Mac OS X (10.3.9) M8758LL/A

I converted from a PC to a Mac Mini. I have my PC documents backed up on a DVD disk. I have an external DVD drive connected to the Mac Mini. I want to open them up and save them to the Mac, BUT....when I put the DVD disk in the Mac is NOT reading it!

I converted from a PC to a Mac Mini. I have my PC documents backed up on a DVD disk. I have an external DVD drive connected to the Mac Mini. I want to open these documents up from the DVD storage and save them to the Mac, BUT....when I put the DVD disk in the Mac is NOT reading it!

Hi Joe,
Thanks for your quick response. I should add....it worked before. When I previously inserted the two DVDs into this remote drive, and I went into finder, I could click on the "remote device" line and see all my saved documents (excel, word, etc) on the DVD and open them on the Mac. Now I cannot see them, when I try to open them on the Mac, nothing happens, nothing is displayed. I just re-tested the remote DVD drive with a CD and, no problem, it opened up the CD via iTunes and I cold play the CD. SO......I know the remote DVD drive (it's an LG by the way) is fine, it's something to do with some settings on my mini mac,especially where I could open it previously. I do not remember changing any settings since then.
When I go into system preferences and click on CD/DVD it gives me options of how to open up a music CD (default is iTunes), a DVD (default is iMovie), etc. The problem is my DVD is all miscellaneious files/documents. I just want to be able to see them in the finder. I also tried to open them via microsoft word, from the remote disk and again, it could not open the drive, even though some of the documents were microsoft word documents. Again, I was able to open them previously and the DVD is not corrupted in any way.
Any additional advice?
Thank you!

External DVD Drive Crashes

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for