Mac Mini + Mac Air External Superdrive

My SuperDrive has stopped working in my Mac Mini early 2009, can I use a Mac Air External SuperDrive as an external replacement?

You can use pretty much any USB CD/DVD drive on the market.
Most will only state on the box Windows requirements, but that
is just for the included bloatware and baitware.

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MacBook Pro and Mac Air - "external monitor"

Is it possible to connect MacBook Pro and Mac Air and use one as an "external monitor"? And if so, which cable would I need?

Hi Hello1852,
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
To use another Mac as a secondary display with your Mac, it will need to be an iMac, not a portable Mac. To learn more about using another Mac as a secondary display, take a look at the article below.
Target Display Mode: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Cheers,
Alex H.

External Superdrive for Mac mini?

Recently I got a disc stuck in the drive of my mini and for the life of me I can't get it out so...I was wondering if they make an external Superdrive that will work with the mini. I had a look at the website and found one that says its for the macbook air, would that one work?Thanks in advance.

Speaking for myself, I typically offer links to that vendor because they have Mac, and system specific, solutions which helps with a level of confidence that the problem is more likely than not to be solved. My personal experience with them as a vendor has born that out.
That said, there are other competent vendors out there too who also offer good service and stand by their products, so it's up to you who you use. The only thing that encourages me to OWC is that if you buy something they are offering as a viable upgrade or add-on to your mini and it proves otherwise, they'll resolve the problem.

Mac Mini + External Superdrive DVD Player Crashing

Hi,
I have a brand new Mac Mini on OSX Mountain Lion and a brand new external superdrive. If a DVD movie is inserted in to the superdrive, DVD Player attempts to load, and then promptly crashes. Anyone else having this problem?

Same thing here. My work around is VLC player but one would think that a brand new mini and a brand new superdrive would work with the Appple DVD Player.
Must be because Steve J. is no longer around

Mac mini and external superdrive

hi
yesterday buy a new mac mini core i5 with a external superdrive and have the next probleme:
when insert a dvd movie the external superdrive no read the movie, only eject the dvd.
what probleme have.
thank you so mutch.

I'll correct myself:
I think you will find that you can't boot from that
drive because it's a USB device. Intel minis can
USB-boot, but PPC systems can only do so from
firewire externals.
Actually some users have had success booting (rather slowly) from USB devices on some Macs, so the above is not universally true. However, if the drive is bootable and the mini recognizes it as such, it will show in the boot loader screen when the system is started with the Option key held down. If it does not appear in the screen and it is correctly attached and powered and has a valid install disk for the system loaded in it, then it isn't bootable.

I have CS6 on my iMac. I want to load it onto an external drive to use off my Mac Air. I have the serial number. How do I do this without having to subscribe to CC?

I have CS6 on my iMac. I want to load it onto an external drive to use off my Mac Air. I have the serial number. How do I do this without having to subscribe to CC?

Note the min-requirements for PS CS6 on a Mac.
Mac OS
Multicore Intel® processor with 64-bit support
Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.7
1GB of RAM
2GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash-based storage devices)
1024×768 (1280×800 recommended) resolution display with 16-bit color and 256MB (512MB for Extended) of VRAM
OpenGL 2.0-capable system
DVD-ROM drive
Nancy O.

Using an old mac mini as an external dvd drive

I was thinking of buying one of the new mac minis.
I have an older one from 2006 (with OS X Tiger 10.4.11 and 512Mb of RAM which means it's not powerful enough for any OS after Leopard) and I was wondering if it would be possible to use that machine as the external superdrive instead of forking out for a new apple superdrive?
I think that there could be some issue with the speed of the USB connection, judging from some questions I've read on the apple website (apple have pumped up the wattage of the connection on their external superdrive) but does that mean that firewire would be ok to connect them up?
Thanks for any help
John

rcmjohn wrote:
I was wondering if it would be possible to use that machine as the external superdrive instead of forking out for a new apple superdrive?
yes.
booting the the Tiger Mini into target disk mode and use its ODD drive on the other Mac.
it may be necessary to pop in the optical media before booting the Mini into TDM.

Do I need a USB superdrive for my new Mac Air?

Do I need a USB superdrive for my new Mac Air if I already have an iMac OS X 10.5 which has a DVD slot?

If you have another PC or Mac with a DVD drive, you can use it for your MacBook Air with Remote Disc > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5287?viewlocale=en_US
This solution works for some tasks, but not for others, so the best way is to buy an external optical drive for your Mac

I just bought a new mac mini and an external DVD burner. I want to burn a DVD video and it will not play on the TV but only on the computer? Need this figured out for tomorrow.

I just bought a new mac mini and an external DVD burner. I want to burn a DVD video and it will not play on the TV but only on the computer? Need this figured out for tomorrow. Can anyone help me?

Congratulations on the new Mini. Are you saying you tried burning and it does not play, or do you want to burn it only for the computer to be able to play it?
OS X Mountain Lion: Burn a CD or DVD may help.

Can I use a Power PC non intel Mac Mini as an external HD with my iMac 3.06

Can I use a Power PC non intel Mac Mini as an external HD with my iMac 3.06 Intel Core Duo
I can't figure out how to get this to work. Is it possible?

WildBull wrote:
Will it work if I connect via usb instead of firewire?
No. There is no "USB Target Disk Mode".
Just so we're clear, when you start your Mac mini in FireWire Target Disk Mode (TDM - holding T on startup), do you see a FireWire icon on the Mac mini's display? IIRC, it's not required that the Mac mini be connected to a display for TDM, but it would help diagnose whether or not the mini is actually starting in this mode.

My airport time capsule will no longer allow our iPhones or vizio smart tvs to connect to it, though my iPad air mac mini and mac air connect fine. Why is this? does a recent software update have anything to do with it?

my airport time capsule will no longer allow our iPhones or vizio smart tvs to connect to it, though my iPad air mac mini and mac air connect fine. Why is this? does a recent software update have anything to do with it?

What model is your TC? What is the firmware?
I recommend you do a factory reset and use short names.. not apple recommended names.
Short.. 2-20 characters .. less than 10 even better.
No spaces.
Pure alphanumeric.
Set fixed channels for 2.4ghz wireless.. test with 11, 6, 1 at least.
That often helps.. if not and is old, ie Gen1-4 go back to 7.6.1 firmware which is far more solid.

Mac air with external hard drive - not being found on Finder, Time Machine, Migration Assistant

I have been using an external drive (Imation Apollo) to access only, old files from previous computer (PC) on a new Mac Air. I had not transferred them across to new computer (didn't want to do that) just accessing them from the HD. It had been working fine until recently. Each time the external drive had been connected Time Machine would come up and ask if i wanted to use this drive for back ups, and I always chose 'Decide later'. So, as yetI hadn't as yet configured Time Machine to do back ups.
Recently I noticed that the extrnal HD was no longer showing up on Finder. Slight panic as i have 5 or 6 yrs of work saved on that HD
Further investigations - it's also not showing up either on on Disk Utility, or on Migration Assistant.
I've done the following:
Tried HD in each of different USB ports - made no difference, HD still not showing up
Tested different Hubs in each port with HD attached - no difference HD not showing up
Tried USB flash drives in the USB ports - These are working fine and show up on finder
Tried the HD on other comptuters (a PC though, don't have access to another mac to do this test)- working fine, the HD is showing up and is accessable
Interrogated the Console logs to try to see if the act of attaching the HD creates a log entry - couldn't find anything
Rebooted computer via shut down, power disconnect - no difference
Reset PRAM - no difference still not showing up
Reset SMC - no differnce still not showing up
So I think I have established that all the USB ports are functioning correctly and able to access other external drive devices, using hubs with external powersource is not the issue, identified that the external hard drive is working OK, and it appears that the Mac itself is functioning normally.
What would be the reason the Mac now does not allow this specific external HD to be identified and accessed. The only possible things I can think of are
if I had in fact pressed 'Do not use' when Time Machine asked 'do you want to use this drive for back ups'. Would that mean that the Mac now totally rejects this HD from being a source of accessible files - I hope not!
I also think that my husband may have disconnected the hard drive from my computer to access some stuff and he just yanked it out rather than use the safe eject method. Could this create an issue? The Hard drive works fine on his PC.
Why is my Mac Air now rejecting this HD and what can I do to access my historical files now.
Any assistance anyone can provide would be very greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Anna

I can't answer why it isn't accessing it, but I have a slightly related issue w my back up drive starting to get noisy.
Realizing that redundancy is safety for critical data. I talked to my brother about my situation the other day & he said he has 3 small Western Digital portable HDs that he rotates for backup. He even keeps 1 in the safe deposit box.
I have read for some time that we should have multiple back ups & also have our critical stuff backed up off site. Amazon HD reviews had a woman telling about how she was very backed up on multiple computers & hard drives, but they were robbed or burgeled & all of them were stolen including her thesis that was on the computers.
Hard drives aren't that expensive. I just bought a new Western Digital 1 TB drive for $89.99. I plan to use it to back up the Seagate that is getting noisy & then maybe alternate them.
Also, when I came back to Mac, I moved practially all of my documents to Mac. I think I just dragged & dropped or something. Photos, Office, & pdfs do fine that way. & then you could back them up to a couple of different external drives & remove from your MacBookAir.
Unfortunately I think most of us do not back up until crisis & then it may be too late.
Also use Time Machine. For the 1st time in my computer life, my computer is well backed up--although now realizing the need for redundancy so will start backing up to at least 2 different HDs alternatly.
So, not sure why it isn't working & hopefully you have come up w a solution by now.
I think what I would do in a situation like this, since you can access it on the Windows machine would be to transfer the data to the Windows machine & then transfer it back to a different back up.
I'm looking into backing up what I still have in Windows using a thumb flash drive. I think it should all fit ok now that they have the larger drives & I don't have very much left in Windows format.

HT201250 Once I use time machine to back up my Mac Air, can I delete all my files from HD and still have access to them on TM (external hard disk)?

New to Time Machine. The HD on my Mac Air is full so I got an external HD and using TM to back up everything.
Can I erase all files (pictures, docs, etc) from my Mac and still have access to those files through Time Machine?

That is a bad idea. Time Machine is strictly a backup utility. What you describe will require archiving files, which Time Machine is not designed to accomplish.
Once you erase files from your MacBook Air, they will eventually be erased from your Time Machine backup. This is by design, as Time Machine will eventually fill your backup volume and will delete old files as required. Depending on when they were first backed up and how long they existed on your MBA before you erase them, they could disappear in as little as one hour.
Use Carbon Copy Cloner or equivalent "clone" utility and configure it to archive files that do not exist on the source, or simply copy them over manually using the Finder. You can then delete them from your MBA. Bear in mind that once you do that, you no longer have a backup copy. The only copies will exist on the external HD.

HT1923 hi, my mac air is really low on disk space, can i remove iTunes (which is huge) to an external hard drive to free up space and then just run it from the hard drive. instead of taking space on the mac? even if the mac no longer has enough to accommo

Hi, my mac air is really low on disk space, can I remove itunes (which is huge) to an external hard drive to free up space?...and then run it from the hard drive instead of the mac,even if the mac no longer has space to accomodate the size of the library?

Yes.
Copy your music iTunes Library folder to the external drive and change the Advanced settings in iTunes to point to this new location.
Once you're happy with these changes you can delete the same Library from your User account to free up space on the internal drive.

I have a windows 7 desktop with an external hard drive setup on my home network, will i be able to access this on my home network to save and retrieve files from my mac air?

i have a windows 7 desktop with an external hard drive setup on my home network, will i be able to access this on my home network to save and retrieve files from my mac air?

Troubleshooting Home Sharing - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2972

Mac Mini + Mac Air External Superdrive

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