Mac Mini DVD Drive fail and upgrading to Snow Leopard

Hey, my Mac Mini has a dvd drive failure, ir reads cd's but just spits out dvd's. It no longer burns cd's either.
The main question is, will I be able to install Snow Leopard from an external dvd drive? As I am thinking about getting one as a burner/player instead of paying sky high prices for a new superdrive to be fitted in the Mini.
Many thanks for any help

Sure,
Here's the methodolgy from Apple:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
Here's a video from OWC, which shows how to install a HD or an Optical Drive into your Mini:
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macmini06-08/
There's probably more than one slot-loading drive model that will work in your Mini, and you may even gain a new capability, like dual-layer DVD burning capability, if you do a little homework on the models that will work for your Mini.
Peace to you,
C. Livingstone

Similar Messages

Mac Pro with software raid and upgrading to Snow Leopard

Not sure if anyone else has experienced this but here goes. I have a mac pro with 4 500G drives using the onboard software raid. When I insert the Snow Leopard disk and try to install, it fails to find the raid. Is there a trick to get this to work?

Thank you SSSOOO much Greg818. I was pulling my hair out over this problem. I even went so far as to do a full Leopard install with Snow Leopard update on a USB drive and them cloned it over to my RAID 0 array using SuperDuper hoping that this would solve the problem. It seemed to in the sense that the clone went fine but then when I would try and boot from the array I would get the Apple Logo and spinning wheel but it just kept spinning and spinning until finally the Apple logo was replaced by the Do Not Enter symbol(you know the circle with the slash through it).
So came here and found this thread. Your solution worked like charm!!! Once again thank you so much... you saved me from being bald.

After hard drive crash, Pages app brought over, and upgrade to snow leopard installed, Pages would not launch. Re-downloaded the 3.0.3 update and Pages launched, but will not open any documents or start new document.

After a hard-drive crash, Pages application was brought over from the old hard drive, and upgraded to snow leopard. However, Pages would not launch. I do not have the disks and the computer was given to me by my son with iWork 08 installed, so I do not have the ability to re-install using Purchases. I re-installed the update 3.0.3, which I already had, but thought it worth a try. That enabled Pages to launch, but it will not open a new or old document. I can see in preview the document, but it will not open. Any suggestions besides repurchasing Pages. I've just put out a lot of money for a new hard drive and retrieval of apps and docs from the old hard drive and would like not to have to put more money in it.
Thanks for any suggestions.

You can not simply drag over Pages, particularly if it was perhaps damaged in a crash.
As it was only Pages '08 it may be time to upgrade to Pages '09 from the App Store. It is not that expensive and will allow you to install it on any Mac sharing the same Apple I.D. and protect you from a repeat of this problem.
There are free alternatives to Pages if you are hard strapped, it depends on what you are using Pages for, it is not the only option by far.
Peter

HT201364 I tried to download OS X Mavericks v10.9.2 into my iMAC purchased on June 25, 2007 and upgraded to Snow Leopard OS X10.6.8 When I tried to download Mavericks OS X, the message came up that it cannot be installed in my computer. Why?

I tried to download OS X Mavericks v 10.9.2 into my iMAC purchased on June 25, 2007 and upgraded to Snow Leopard 10.6.8 When I tried to download OS X Mavericks v 10.9.2 into my iMAC, the message came up that it cannot be installed in my computer. Why?

Because there is a flaw in the App Store that gives you an alert you can never ever get rid of telling you to download Mavericks, even though when you click it then tells you your machine is too (I have to say 'darn' here because Apple automatically astersiks out the first word I used that also begins with d and is four letters) old. So you have to live with that little "1 update available" alert, though in reality, you cannot install it. You can imagine that either it is a sinister plot to wear away at you to buy some new hardware, even though yours is working just fine, or that it is a programming error Apple just doesn't care enough about to correct.

Serious Mac Mini DVD Drive issue!

Ok guys, having big troubles with my Minis disc drive at the minute!
Heres what happened…
Tried to copy some files off a DVD so that I could make several copies of it for my grandfather. The Disc is a home made one that he made himself, complete with a label over the top of the disc.
When I put the disc in, it was a little noisy, but nothing unusual. When spinning the disc to take the files off however, the whirring became a loud vibrating/grinding noise, and went on for quite some time. It then slowed down, until it eventually stopped. At this point, the DVD drive itself (and not the Mac!) started playing an on off tone that sounded less than happy. Sounded quite similar to an alarm of some kind. Strangely it was clearly a hardware noise, and not a software noise.
Pressing the Eject button on the keyboard did nothing, reboot, the warning tone continued, and only after pressing the on and off button twice to get it to hibernate then wake up, did it want to spit the disk out.
I just put a standard film DVD in now to see if the drive was working, it took it in quite happily, whirred away fine, no horrible noises, but didnt find the disk, and now wont eject it for love nor money.
When going into System profiler to see if the Disc drive has some osrt of error status or anything hardware related messages, it causes System profiler to crash. All the other menu items work fine, but going to disc reading crashes it everytime
Message was edited by: BennyboyOxtoby

I think the lesson here is: DON'T use labels on discs (or tell your grandfather not to!)
You may have damaged your disk drive. If you are OK with computer maintenance, you can change it yourself for just the cost of a new one - £30-£40 from eBay - much, much less than getting Apple to do it.

Print booklet fails after upgrade to Snow Leopard

After upgrading to Snow Leopard I had to reinstall the driver for my HP 4000N printer. Now all of my booklets print with the right side truncated in the middle as if the paper were 8-1/2 x 8-1/2 instead of 11 inches wide. The InDesign preview shows it correctly. It printed fine yesterday in OS X 10.5, InDesign CS3. Does anyone have advice?

I did a clean install of Snow Leopard on a new disk and InDesign has the same problem of clipping a landscape layout booklet.
I bought a new HP Laserjet and it has the same problem.
I downloaded a trial version of InDesign CS5 on the new system with the new printer and it has the same problem.
InDesign just thinks the paper is only 8-1/2" wide in the Print Booklet procedure and it clips the printing at 8-1/2". It will print a normal landscape page fine. It shows the Preview of the booklet correctly. I can save the booklet as a PostScript file and Preview will print it fine. I've been printing the same booklet under 10.5 for several years without problem.
InDesign just won't print the booklet correclty under Snow Leopard.

ICal delegation failing after upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion

I've just upgraded our Snow Leopard server to run Lion Server.
I have a problem with iCal Server.
Individual calendars work OK: can be accessed from iCal / iThings and so on, and via web interface. But calendar delegation doesn't.
If I open Accounts / Preferences / Delegation from any version of iCal / Calendar I get this error:
In the server calendar server error log I see the following:
[twext.web2.dav.method.report_expand#error] Error reading property (u'http://calendarserver.org/ns/', u'calendar-proxy-read-for') for resource /principals/__uids__/BCDF1D53-4447-40A2-A035-B30F6E2EEDE4/: <StatusResponse 403 Unable to list properties: /Volumes/StorageHD/Library/Server/Calendar and Contacts/Documents>
Anyone got any ideas what is going on and / or how to fix?
Thanks in advance for any help available.

OK - Fixed it.
Turns out the cure is to use the Webcal Interface to re-create the delegations. A bit tedious, but doing this presumably forces a rewrite of the file that previously cannot be accessed. Means you need to set up the delegation again for each account - but this at least is an improvement over not being able to do anything at all.
Once fixed, delegation works just fine.
Hope this helps someone else solve the issue etc.

Should I take the plunge and upgrade to Snow Leopard?

I have a MacBook Pro with 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB memory.
I have just upgraded my printer after the last one died, so now have no real reason stopping me to upgrade to Snow Leopard. The question is though, is there any real good reason to do so?
With 4GB of RAM I'm probably not going to get any benefit from the 64bit architecture, so I'm wondering whether I'm better off just waiting until the release of OS X 10.7?
Any thoughts?

My vote, Upgrade. It is great. Among many other things, the one thing that is noticeable and also impressive is the speed at which everything happens in SL. Way quicker than previous OSs. Also, some apps are upgraded like preview, image capture etc.
You might want to look at the reviews from last year.
http://thurly.net/stt
http://thurly.net/stu

DVD drive failed after upgrade to 10.4.9

After upgrading to OS X 10.4.9 I noticed that my internal DVD drive (SuperDrive Pioneer DVR-104) failed.
I did the delta upgrade and immediately checked the most common "error" of misbehaving eject key. The key did not function at all, even after pressing it for minutes.
Later I found out that the complete drive failed.
System Profiler tells me (sorry german output)
Modell: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-104
Version: 0000
Seriennummer:
Absteckbares Laufwerk: Nein
Protokoll: ATAPI
Einheiten-Nummer: 0
Socket-Typ: Intern
Note: no version or serial number!
DVD player gives the message (translated):
"no valid DVD drive found [-70012]"
Toast does not find the drive.
I did:
- repair permissions
- repair drive/file system
- the combo upgrade
- reset parameter ram
- reset all from open firmware
- reset PMU
no change
Do you have any hints besides replacing the drive?
Maybe it's just a coincidence. I did not use the drive for 2 weeks before
the upgrade.
Stefan
PowerMac G4 Dual 1GHz MDD Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Hi, Welcome to Apple Discussions.
It sounds like LaunchServices.
Launch /Utilities/Terminal and copy & paste this at the command line:
Code:
<pre class="alt2" style="margin:0px; padding:3px; border:1px inset; width:640px; height:34px; overflow:auto">/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/\Frameworks/LaunchServi ces.framework/Support/lsregister \-kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user</pre>
Then log out and back in or restart. Let us know.
-mj
[email protected]

Mac Mini - DVD Drive malfunction?

Hello,
For the last 2 weeks, my MacMini's DVD drive doesn't work normally :
- trying to burn an audio CD doesn't work if I don't reduce the burning speed thru iTunes parameters
- a CD bought on the Apple store with a full licence software when inserted in the DVD drive is "seen" as a blank CD
- same thing for a CD created by a friend
This behaviour isn't taking place every time. If I insert a DVD with a movie for example, it perfectly works and the DVD Reader software starts normally.
What can I do? Where can I find information on the way of replacing myself the DVD drive of my computer?
Thanks for any help
EB
MacMini Intel Mac OS X (10.4.9)
MacMini Intel Mac OS X (10.4.9)

EBUTZ, welcome to the Mac Mini Forum!
Interestingly enough, another poster from France described her experiences in replacing her DVD drive about 6 months ago in these forums.
Personally, I'd recommend buying a tray-loading, firewire external drive. It will be faster, and less fussy about media than the Mini's Superdrive. And probably cheaper and definitely easier than installing an internal drive.

New Mac Mini dvd drive replacement

hey has anyone tried to replace the DVD drive with the Sony BC-5600S bluray drive
its sata and the right size and its a slot drive, i really want to give it a shot
the drive can be had online for around $100. anyone tried this or think its possible?

Well I got a bluray drive in my PC rig I could pull out and connect to my mini and test this out but that's way too much work besides I could just google it and find out which I did:
It looks like it works in bootcamp just need to make sure to watch out for some stuff
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1213777&tstart=4
Someone was even nice enough to write a step-by-step on how to do it:
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=84989
p.s. Since the 9400 video that comes with the 2009 mini is HDCP compliant you should be able to use the DVI adapter it came with and you'll get smooth video since the 9400 was designed for high definition playback!
Message was edited by: davi angel

Replace mid 2010 mac mini hard drive(s) and thermal sensor(s)

TL;DR: How do I swap SSd for HDD in Mid 2010 Mac Mini without Fan problems.
I'd like to replace both my Mac Mini HDD's with SSD's, but removing/repositioning* the factory thermal sensors will default the fan to full throttle! (I've had this happen on my other mid 2010 test machine). Has anyone successfully swapped out their drives and not had to deal with a system fan on Afterburner mode?
Note: on my test mac mini, I tried SMC fan control as well as SSD Fan Control apps and neither is able to change the fan RPM.
SMC Fan control (this is what I use on my macbook)
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23049/smcfancontrol
SSD Fan Control: (suggested by others with similar thermal sensor/fan problems)
http://exirion.net/ssdfanctrl
* the position of the thermal sensors on the factory hitachi's is apparently important. In a test, I moved one a few millimeters and the fans defaulted to full speed.
Cheers!
Ken

I replace the HD on my 2009 Mini with no fan problems.
From your description I think yo have either a sensor or logic board problem. If the sensor was not attached to the HD and was "cold" then the fan speed would not increase if the HD got hot.
When you played around with sensor position what what the temperature of the sensor when you go the "right" fan speed and the runaway speed.

Attempted to install AirPort Utility 6.0 on my new mac mini. Install failed and now the previous version 5.5.3 won't open. I downloaded and tried to instal 6.0 without software update, which failed, and my old 5.5.3 AirPort Utility still won't open? Help.

Now the previous version won't open. I downloaded and tried to instal 6.0 without software update, which failed, and my old 5.5.3 Airport Utility still won't open.
iTunes no longer recognizes my airport express.
Error Message:
None of the selected updates could be installed.
An unexpected error occurred.
Can't delete Airport Utility and reinstal from scratch as it is, “AirPort Utility” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by Mac OS X.
Any sugestions?

I reinstalled AirPort 5.5.3 which worked, but the app still won't launch but iTunes now recognizes my AirPort Express, I just hope I don't want to change its settings.

Transfer songs from iphone to new mac (my hard-drive failed and has been replaced), some songs i have bought on itunes and others were old copies, any ideas?

hi
i have recently had my mac hard-drive replaced and consequently have lost all my old stuff - had to download a new itunes for example. i synced everything onto my iphone before it broke luckily. some songs i purchased on itunes, others i downloaded ages ago from CDs. how do i transfer these onto my itunes library again so i can sync?

iTunes can transfer your purchases or you can download them again. Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2519
For songs ripped from CDs, you need to use a 3rd-party utility. Here are two that will help you.
http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/
http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/index.php

How can I restore my iTunes library via Time Machine after an erase/install and upgrade to Snow Leopard?

Actual problem:
I reinstalled all my programs that I need without a hitch. Meanwhile, I've been trying to recover the few files (mostly music) I actually store on my computer's hard drive as opposed to on my external HDs. I use one external HD for my graphic files and the other is strictly for Time Machine backups. I tried to recover my iTunes music, but I got a message that says: "The file: "iTunes Library.itl" cannot be read because it was created by a newer version of iTunes." I restored (I thought) my iTunes library Username/Music/iTunes." Additionally, I was going to upgrade to Mountain Lion, but I have seen that there were issues with Lion and iTunes libraries so I'm a little wary of this.
Excuse the long explanation, but I figure the problem may possibly be in the details of the weeks prior this problem:
I have recently been having issues with my iMac. I brought it in to see a Genius twice within the past month and they couldn't seem to find the problem. (It would restart Finder of it's own accord while I was using Adobe CS programs) I figured it was worth backing everything up via Time Machine and doing a complete erase/install/factory reset. I did so and had a problem again, and brought it in again, third time. The Genius did another diagnostics tests and found nothing and said my erase/install probably did the trick, but time will tell. I am, after the erase/rewrite and upgrade running Mac OS X 10.6.3 and previous to this was still running Tiger.

So, I didn't update iTunes and the rest of it after installing Snow Leopard. My stupidity, I figured that the OS was more up to date than the one I had previously so that all the programs that come with it probably were more current than the ones I was using. However, now that I have updated all my software, I am still getting the same message from iTunes that I was previously. I cannot open iTunes at all, same "The file: "iTunes Library.itl" cannot be read because it was created by a newer version of iTunes." message. I'm confused again. Checked a few other threads and whatnot and cannot seem to figure this out.

Mac Mini DVD Drive fail and upgrading to Snow Leopard

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for