I removed my optical drive because i added an ssd hard drive. when i plug in the dvd to usb it will not play from the macbooks dvd program. the error message is there was an initialization error, a valid drive could not be found.

Question

I can go into disk utility and see the optical drive and mount what ever cd is in the drive and quicktime will play it. but i would like to have the dvd program recognize the optical drive and open what ever is in it.

Answer 1

Freakin amazing! I installed a new 1TB Samsung SSD in my main hard drive slot and moved my old hard drive into my DVD slot and moved my DVD to an external DVD case and it would never work with movies, only software disks. I have Late 2011 Macbook Pro running Mavericks with 1TB Samsung SSD and a 512GB HDD in the DVD slot with my DVD in an OWC external DVD case.
I tried this trick but at first, this did not work because OxED was saving the new file as a text file and not a unix file. I was perplexed until I read the comments below the article and found the tip to use Terminal to change the saved file to a Unix file. I have never used Terminal before and I had no clue what I was doing, but I just followed the steps to a T and it worked. It took two tries with Terminal.
The comment mentioned "Code:" so I typed that along with the rest and it didn't work. I tried it again and this time just typed
chmod +x (with a space after the x) then dragged and dropped the saved dvd file from my Desktop into Terminal and hit enter. Worked great. Thank you. I have my DVD player back.
I also had to play around with some permissions and I had to remove the original file completely from the "A" folder, before I dropped the new file back in.
Took a little work, but I am back up and running. Thanks to all who contributed to this and yet OWC definitely needs to have all this in their manual or even provide a disk or software download that does this automatically.
Here is the trick: http://macenstein.com/default/2011/07/how-to-get-your-external-super-drive-worki ng-in-lion/
Be sure that the new file saves as a Unix file. If it doesnt save as Unix, you will need to:
Open Terminal.
Type:    chmod +x
…with a space at the end (and do NOT press enter yet).
Then, drag the saved file you want to change from whereever it is saved and drop it on top of the Terminal window. The file path and filename should automatically fill in (and you should ensure that there’s a space between “+x” and the file path).
Press enter.