Idvd 3.0 won't find external dvd drive

I am having difficulty with idvd not finding external dvd/rw drive. It came with software, but I need it to burn through idvd. Please advise, thanks!

Unfortunately iDVD versions 4 and previous only work with the internal superdrive and will not see external drives. There is a patch to make iDVD work with an external drive, but I think it only works with iDVD4.
Patrick

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Satellite A660 - Not finding external DVD drive

Hey guys. Newbie posting out of total desperation and needing help! I have posted in other forums with no luck. I bought a Samsung SH-D162D DVD Drive in a USB enclosure to connect to my Satellite A660 via USB.
I cannot get Windows 7 to find it! When I plug in the USB cable the balloon comes up to say it has been installed (sometimes), I can see it on for about 1 or 2 minutes then it drops off. It isnt listed in my hardware or anything. Its not found in Disk Management or My Devices so it isnt a case of changing the drive letter - I cant find the drive to change it. I have also tried to find the upper and lower settings in regedit. Couldnt find them so couldnt delete them as advised in other posts of this nature.
It is set to master, the IDE connector and power connectors are fine. Its gotta be a Windows 7 problem cause it does show up very breifly. In the minute or 2 its there I cant do anything with it. It just hangs although it will open and close. Ive googled it and cant find anything. Mainly registry issues but they didnt help.
Ive also connected it up to another laptop with XP and had no problems so I know the DVD Rom works fine and all the cables are ok. Ive tried in all 4 USB ports on my laptop and also turned off all energy settings. All with no luck. And I also have every Windows 7 update.
Heres exactly what happens from power off on the enclosure.
1 - I plug in the USB lead then turn on power to the enclosure.
2 - I quickly go to Start, and I can see the DVD Rom drive E next to my laptops dvd rom.
3 - The green bar at the top starts filling up from left to right and gets about half way then suddenly the DVD Rom icon disappears and so does the green bar.
4 - It then flashes up under the laptops DVD Rom icon with a Local Disk drive E but only for a split second.
5 - Sometimes a balloon comes up saying installing device, then device successfully installed...but not every time.
And thats it. I'm at a total loss and cant work it out, so any help is really appreciated!

Hi Smee,
So if you have already connected the external drive to another computer and this worked properly, it seems to be a driver or compatibility issue between your external DVD drive and and your Satellite A660
It will be connected to USB port so have you tried to remove all USB ports from device manager? After this you should restart your computer and the USB ports will be recognized from device manager automatically. Furthermore I would also try updating the chipset driver. Newest version you can download on official Toshiba website:
http://eu.computers.toshiba-europe.com > Support & Downloads > Download Drivers
Have you also tested other devices on your A660 if they work properly?

IDVD won't recognize second DVD drive.

The DVD drive in my G5 stopped functioning, so I plugged in a FireWire external DVD drive. The OS recognizes the DVD disk and the external drive, but iDVD does not. When I click the "Burn" button, it opens the drawer of the built-in (non-functional) DVD drive and tells me to insert a blank DVD.
There seems to be no facility for telling iDVD which DVD drive to use. Am I missing something?
Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hi John:
You might want to try what Len Goff always recommends:
Create a disc image and then burn the DVD. File/Save As Disc Image...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=164927
This will isolate any encoding/burning issues you may encounter. Once the disc image is created, double-click the .img and burn the virtual disc that should appear on your desktop, using Toast to burn the DVD. Disk Utility to burn the .img file. Usually, you can select a burning speed in Disk Utility.
There are variations to this process based on which OS X you are using...
Open Disk Utility (in Utilities folder in Applications folder), click on the virtual disc (maybe the .img) in the left-hand window. Click the Burn icon. A new window should drop down and your SuperDrive tray will open after clicking the Burn icon. Insert a recordable DVD. (Verbatim DVD-R preferred by me.) Click the Close button. Wait. Select a burn speed. If you hold your mouse cursor over the pop-up it says: "Select a slower speed to work around burn failures," so select 4x or slower for best results. Then click the Burn button.
-->If the virtual disk selection won't allow you to click the Burn icon, use the .img file instead. This may have changed in 10.3.9 and did change in Tiger.
Also, you can use DVD Player to play the virtual disk to check your iDVD project before burning to DVD. Launch DVD Player. File/Open VIDEO_TS (Open DVD Media... in Player 4.6). Find the VIDEO_TS folder and open that. (The audio folder is for DVD-Audio disks.)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93006
Alternatively, you may want to get PatchBurn.
http://www.patchburn.de/index.html
Sue

Installing Tiger with external DVD drive, why won't it work??

I have been trying to install OS X 10.4.3 from the DVD disk, last time I upgrade the OS I had to go out and buy an external DVD drive because I only have a cd drive in my mac. This worked fine last time but now I'm upgrading again it just won't work.
I can not get the mac to boot from the DVD, it sees it's there, I've tried holding down c, the alt key, the option key, choosing the DVD as the start up disk and checking the firmware, nothing will work!
I have read other questions of the same nature but I don't seem to have found an answer.
Can anyone help me, please??
Ruth
imac Power PC G3 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

I'm having the same problem. My mom has a Quicksilver G4 – four years old, but plenty to run Tiger. The only thing is we didn't get the built in DVD player. We got an external firewire DVD but can't get the machine to boot from the disk in the external drive.
If I try to run the installer I get a (-2) error that Startup Disk can't make the selected drive the boot drive. If I go into Startup I can select the DVD, but upon actual start up it can't find it and I eventually get the folder with the question mark. Holding down option doesn't bring it up in the list and holding down c does absolutely nothing.
Anybody else?

External dvd drive won't work on USB macBook air

External dvd drive won't work on my macBook air usb port. It works on older versions of air and iMac.
Any ideas. Tried the left shift, control, option and power button sumultaniously, but did not work.

I know that no one has replied yet, but figured out the issue. I called Applecare and they couldn't figure it out, so sent me to a genuis at the Apple store. They too couldn't figure it out and told me that it was a firmware issue with the Toshiba dvd external drive. When I got home, I thought I would try one more thing. I hooked it up to a powered hub and it works perfectly. I'm not sure why no one else thought of it, but glad that I did.

Panther to Tiger DVD won't restart on external DVD drive, G4 tower!

I purchased the DVD Tiger upgrade last year! My tower does not have a dvd drive so I finally purchased an external LG Super drive to upgrade my system from 10.3 to Tiger. It plugs in into a USB Port with an additional USB port when you need extra power(don't know if this is the problem it also will not burn a dvd, using toast lite, but will load one). The dvd loads and is visual on my screen but it will not get past the restart screen. Says it can not retart using the dvd drive. I have attempted to hold down the "c" key, the control key and change the start up disk option in the preferences to the 10.5 system which is visual in my start up screen as well as my 10.3 system. Processor speed and ram should be fine according to Apple when I purchased it. Nothing works!
(error message)attempts to install the 10.4 OS results in a msg "you cannot install Mac OSX on this volume. Mac OSX cannot start up from this volume."
Any advise is welcome.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
There are reasons why Mac OS X won't install on your volume:
1. If you are using a PCI PowerMac G4, versus an AGP PowerMac G4, it won't support an external DVD drive for booting via Firewire. See this article to determine if that's the case:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3082?viewlocale=en_US
2. If you are using an Update or DropIn labelled DVD. These can only be used on PowerMac G5s, iMac G4s, Powerbook G4s, iBook G4s, that were released between April 6th 2005, and April 29th, 2005.
Your profile says you are using a PowerMac G4, so we can only assume you are not using one of the above models which can use the disc.
3. If you are using a gray disc that is labeled some other Mac model than one of the above models, those will not work with a PowerMac G4.
4. If your disc looks like * and does not say Update, DropIn, or OEM on it, try using the startup manager instead to boot the disc:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA27043?viewlocale=en_US
Select the disc instead of following step 3 in the above article:
3. Click the Apple Hardware Test volume in the startup manager.
and continue to follow the steps. Sometimes the 'C' key doesn't work.
5. You don't have at least 256 MB of RAM installed. See my FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/badram.html
P.S. It appears you didn't read the header of this forum. We'll ask a moderator to move this post for you.
If your question concerns a hardware or software technical issue, please do not post in this forum — instead, go to the Apple Discussions Homepage, select an appropriate product category and follow the links until you reach the correct forum for your post, then click the Post New Topic link
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.
Message was edited by: a brody
Message was edited by: a brody

Restore Disc Will Not Boot From External DVD Drive

I am using an original MacBook Pro that I decided could use a good restore, and started to clean house. The optical drive is broken, so I am using an external USB drive. I inserted the restore disc that came with the computer (It has OS X 10.4.6 on it), erased my HD, and proceeded to install Tiger. However, setup froze while installing Photobooth, and I was forced to shut down the computer.
I'm trying to get my Macbook Pro to boot from the restore disc that came with it so I can try setup again, but it won't work. If I hold C during the boot, I get a flashing folder with a question mark over it. If I hold option, I get a cursor, but just a blank, gray screen. In both instances, the external DVD drive is active and reading the disc, but I'm not getting any results on the screen. I've also reset PRAM.
If I can just get my computer to boot from the disc, I should be able to get back on track. Thanks.

When I press option during boot, nothing happens. Just a gray screen and cursor, like I described above. I haven't been able to test the external drive yet on another mac to see if it is bootable because I can't find the other computer's boot disc at the moment, but I'll try later with something else.
I have been able to access the drive through Target Disk mode successfully though. Is there something in particular I should do with the files? The folders are:
Applications
cores
dev
etc
Library
OSInstall.mpkg.998YblbM
System
tmp
Users
var
Volumes

My optical drive went out. what external dvd drive will work?

My optical drive is going out. I went to Apple and they suggested I buy an external dvd drive instead of paying $150+ to replace the drive on my MacBook Pro. I bought the Samsung Ultra Portable Slim External DVD drive and it took about 15+minutes for my Mac to even acknowledge it. Then it read the dvd and then my Mac told me it was consuming too much power through the USB and disconnected it. And I could not get it to work after that. I called Apple Support to find out what drives will work and they told me their USB Superdrive. I told them I read it won't work with Mac's that already have an optical drive installed, they looked it up and told me I'm correct. When I asked them what other drives they suggest, they told me they had no idea and I should google it.
Super frustrated.

Virtually ant external drive should work with your MBP. I would suggest one with external power so that you do not run into the same problem.
You might try a USB 'Y' connector with the one that you have purchased. That may allow sufficient power for it to operate. This is an example:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998124&nm_mc=KNC-Google Adwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-SSD%2f+HDD+Accessory-_-N82E16817998124& gclid=CPSg2Y7EgrcCFccx4AodvycAyg
Ciao.

DVD Player 4.6.5 does not recognize external DVD drive

I had to get an external DVD drive (Sony DRX-S70U) for my Intel iMac after the built in one crapped out. I just put in a DVD and when DVD Player 4.6.5 opens it says "There was an initialization error - A valid DVD drive could not be found. [-70012]"
But the DVD appears on the Desktop. So it knows its there, just DVD Player won't work. Is there any way to change the preferences or anything so that DVD Player will work? I know I can download a 3rd party software, but I'd like to use the Mac stuff if possible.
Thanks!

Try this.. Read the NOTE in 10. FIRST.
1. Create a New User: Sign in as New User.
2. Dbl Click HD Icon, locate User Icon. This will show your orig user and the new user acct.
3. Click the New User.
4. Locate the Library Icon and open it.
5. Locate Applications Folder, open it.
6. Locate DVD player folder. Open it there are 2 folders. (this is good). Red X Close
7. Use the EDIT from top menu bar. Make Duplicate, this copies the folder without the 'copy' name on the file. "DVD player" is what you want. Otherwise wont work.
8. Paste it to your desktop.
9. Close the New User folder. This drops you back to Users folder.
10. Open the original user acct. **NOTE, at this point you may begin to see little red dots on the folders. When you see them, Click on the LIB folder, then use the "GET INFO" command to show the status of the permissions. Click the DETAIL tab, and click the yellow lock next to OWNER. Change ownership to read as your orig acct. Change permissions to READ AND WRITE. Group: Staff (it worked for me). Click APPLY TO ENCLOSED ITEMS, click the yellow lock. Check the info before closing the menu. You may have to repeat this as you delve deeper.
11. Dbl click LIB, then Application Support. Then paste or drag the DVD player folder in.
12. Close out all windows, LOG off as new user.. Log on as Orig user.
13. Dbl click HD icon, Applications Icon, find DVD player Dbl click that. It should work.
Thanks to all the input from the Discussions that allowed me to solve this problem.
iMac FlatScreen 17in G5 Mac OS X (10.4.7) 760 ram

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.

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.

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!

Macbook pro external DVD drive initialization error 70012

This is an answer to my own question and a comment about finding answers to questions on Apple forums.
The situation
I have a Macbook Pro, late-2009 model. In 2013, the internal DVD or optical drive died. I purchased an Apple external DVD drive to be able to read DVD disks, listen to audio, and watch video content. Because the computer I own was built to read only the internal DVD drive, it did not recognize this new external drive. When I plugged it in, I received an error: A valid DVD drive could not be found [-70012]. Or , or DVD could not be found, initialization error[- 70012].
The question
Given this situation, my question was, how do I solve DVD initialization error 70012?
The answer
Since my Apple Care plan had long since expired, before spending time and money at the Apple store to solve this, I decided to look online. After searching general sites and more and more specific sites, I found several posts on forums about my problem. The most helpful of these, with respect to an external DVD drive, was posted on CNET, by Topher Kessler (June 10, 2011 2:24 PM PDT):
http://www.cnet.com/news/addressing-dvd-player-error-70012-when-using-external-d rives-in-os-x/
The key to his advice was twofold:
1. Hardware: The Macbook Pro was programmed to recognize the internal DVD/optical drive alone.
2. Software: The preferences in the Macbook Pro were set to open Apple's DVD Player when a disc is inserted into the drive.
To play audio or video discs on an external drive, the computer needed to be instructed to recognize the external drive, plus appropriate software needed to be opened. Mr. Kessler's advice went from hardware (i.e., get a new internal drive), to software (i.e., use different audio or video software), to operating system (i.e., alter the code in the operating system). Like with Goldie Locks, the first was too expensive, the last was too invasive, but the middle option was just right.
I searched for free software to display audio and video on my external drive and found two that could do the job quite nicely. There are others, but these seemed to be the most recognized and highly rated:
1. MPlayerX (http://mplayerx.org/download.html)
2. VLC Media Player (http://download.cnet.com/mac/media-players/?rpp=30)
So, I didn't have to buy an internal DVD drive and I didn't have to alter the code of the operating system. I just needed to download free software, install, and play.
The points to learn
1. Computers involve both hardware and software, therefore solutions to computer problems can require fixes to one, the other, or both.
2. The simplest solution, and the least expensive, is to be preferred over the more complex.
3. What went wrong for someone else is not necessarily what happened to your computer or software.
4. What solved someone else's problem may not solve your problem.
5. Just because nobody has posted information on how to solve your problem doesn't mean there isn't a solution to it.

Hi Duane,
Thanks for the info! That's some catch-22 for DVD Player... but useful info. I guess I'll just pick up a generic DVD-ROM to replace the drive with.
As to the external drive, do not USB 2.0 cases run at the same speeds at Firewire 400 cases? (the same drive has no issues on other machines for playing dvds... just the lampshade iMac)

Idvd 3.0 won't find external dvd drive

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