New internal optical drive : please suggest me a new one

Dears all,
since i discover my internal drive is faulty ( i am discovering right now ) and i am not the only customer encontering the same problem ( some dvd readed some not ) .
Please suggest me a new one to put inside my Mac Pro 2.8 late 08.
Thanks in advance.
The faulty drive is : OPTIARC DVD RW AD-7170A 1.NC

The Optiarc drives are Sony (NEC dropped out of the Optiarc consortium) and they're the ones that are failing!
Lost the NEC controllers?
I hadn't seen a connection between Optiarc and Sony (here in Japan).
'Spose it is another Apple crippled firmware scenario like the Pioneers of old?
Get rid of the Apple firmware and Pioneers just keep on burning......
Anyhow, thanks for the heads up!

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Need to buy new internal hard drive ~ suggestions of where to buy online?

My 3 year old Mac Mini needs a new internal hard drive. I'm trying to find one online, but when I go to macsales.com for instance, I can't figure out the item I should be buying that will work. I'm clueless.
Is there any online place anyone would suggest in particular?
And what do I look for? Will it say 'mac mini internal hard drive' and will I know it will work in my old mini? (not intel).
Does anyone know of a good place to take to have it installed in the Seattle area?
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With a little experience, replacing the drive on a Mac mini would take a little less than an hour, so I suspect you're being quoted the standard minimum for the job by those two sources. Whether you take that up or do it yourself really depends on your level of confidence. Opening the mini is a daunting proposition since there's no clear way to do it, and the plastic creaks and clicks as it's being levered apart with the putty knives, but it's actually very simple to do. Once the top is off, it is a fairly simply process to get to the drive, remove it, fit a new one and then reassemble. The only common issue from doing this work is failing to reconnect the fan control cable (symptom of having forgotten it is that the fan runs continuously on start up).
I would suggest that if you have a flat, clear table, an hour to spare, two putty knives and a suitable screwdriver, you would likely find it a fairly easy job once you get started. Indeed, you might even think about increasing the system memory at the same time!
One thing I would suggest is that if you have a digital camera, once you have the top open, start taking pictures as you progress through the job. That will help overcome the 'where does this go?' syndrome, should it strike!
In terms of sources of drive, the reason Boece suggested OWC in the first reply is that they have already done the work of figuring out which drives are compatible and which are not. If you are in any doubt about which drive will work and which won't, it would make sense to source the drive from them, knowing it is suitable, than through another vendor where you may be less sure!

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Around 3 months ago I tried boot camping my Macbook with Windows 7 but it ended up freezing and I had to restart my computer. When the computer had fully restarted I found that a few things had changed. First, I now had a 70 GB partition called BOOTCAMP but it was basically unusable since the Windows 7 OS was never installed in the partition, and second the Optical Drive wasn't recognized by my computer anymore so it won't work at all and the Windows 7 CD is now stuck in there.
I tried a lot of different ways that I found on the internet to try to eject the CD but nothing has worked. It's not really a huge deal since CDs are starting to become the new floppy disks but it would still be nice to have this working again.
Also, here's the original post that I made back in December. It never got any replies and somehow got moved but I was never able to see where it got moved because whenever I clicked "discussion" in "Branched to a new discussion." I would get a page that said this - "Unauthorized. Access to this place or content is restricted. If you think this is a mistake, please contact your administrator or the person who directed you here." I know the whole post is pretty long so I have a TLDR; at the end of it and I pretty much summarized the problem again at the top of this whole post.
Alright so earlier today I decided to Bootcamp my Macbook and install Windows 7 with a 70GB partition. I was using https://help.apple.com/bootcamp/mac/5.0/help/#/bcmp173b3bf2 and http://www.howtogeek.com/186907/how-to-install-windows-on-a-mac-with-boot-camp/ to help guide me through the process. Everything was running smoothly at first...I had a 32GB memory stick that I used to load the support software onto and I had a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit DVD in my disk drive.
The first problem I ran into was when Bootcamp wanted to download the files onto the memory stick - it wanted me to format the stick. So I went into Disk Utility, clicked on it, went to erase, then formatted it to the same format it was (because it was already FAT) and then it all worked. After getting the support software onto the memory stick the next step was to partition my disk. After doing a TON of research I finally decided that 70GB would be enough for the OS, a game or two, Sony Vegas Pro, and a few small programs. So I dragged the thing to give the new partition 70 GB and pressed install.
Then, the next problem occurred - a message popped up saying "The USB drive connected to this Mac contains a bootable volume. In order to install Windows 7 from the DVD, the Boot Camp Assistant needs to disable this functionality. No information on the drive will be removed, do you want to continue?" I was hesitant at this point to do anything so I googled it and couldn't find much except this thread - Bootable volume on USB flash drive in boot camp. I decided to try it and press continue since according to the thread it would stop me if there was a problem. Once I did I THINK (I can't remember that it did for sure or not) it dismounted the memory stick, which I remember thinking was okay because I could just unplug it and plug it back in after Windows 7 was installed to install the support software (Also, I NEVER removed the memory stick until after a reboot later on). After that Bootcamp began partitioning my hard drive.
About an hour later the blue progress bar had actually filled up to at least 99% (but it looked like 100% to me) but Bootcamp still said "Status: Partitioning Disk" so I left it alone for another 1-2 hours. After that I started getting worried and googled how long this process was supposed to take and found out that this step normally only took a few minutes for most people. At this point I started looking up fixes for this but nothing matched my problem since Bootcamp itself wasn't actually frozen (when I clicked and held on the icon it didn't say "Application not responding") so I decided to check to see if the partition had worked. Then, Disk Utility froze like a few seconds after opening it up so I had to force quit that. My next option was to check under "Storage" in "About this mac" so I tried that and it froze as well. While all this was going on I kept checking back to Bootcamp and it never froze.
Now I was getting extremely worried and with no solutions on Google and no idea what to do I decided to just try and restart my computer and pray to god that it would reboot fine. Luckily, it did...for the most part. After rebooting all my applications seemed to be working fine (I can confirm that Terminal, Disk Utility, System Preferences, System Information, and Safari are all working or at least loading). I also had all my files still on my computer so that was good. Next, I checked Disk Utility to see if the partition had actually worked and it did, or at least it is showing up as "BOOTCAMP" under my main hard drive. Then, I tried using Bootcamp again and this is when I noticed something new - a warning on Bootcamp's first page that wasn't there before, "You need an optical drive to install Windows. Connect an optical drive to your computer. You cannot install Windows with a remote optical drive." I can't guarantee that it wasn't there the first time but I really don't remember it there. After reading that I checked my Desktop for the mounted Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit DVD and it wasn't there. Then, I checked Disk Utility and it wasn't showing up there either. The only things I can see on Disk Utility are my main hard drive with both partitions, my memory stick, and a random dmg file called decryptedFile.dmg (the size of this file is only 15.6mb so I don't think it could be the OS DVD).
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Anyways, sorry for the extreme detail that I went into but I wanted to get as much information about what happened as I possibly could. For those of you who don't have time to read all that I'll put a little summary.
TLDR; Basically, I tried to Bootcamp my Macbook to run Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I ran into a few problems and then Bootcamp wouldn't move on from "Status: Partitioning Disk" so I had to restart my computer. After the restart my Macbook doesn't recognize that it has an internal Superdrive and therefore doesn't realize that there's a Windows 7 Ultimate DVD disk in it. I looked around for answers but none of the simple ones (using key commands on the keyboard and typing something into terminal) worked. Now I'm looking for help to get my computer to realize that it does have a Superdrive inside so I can get the disk out.
Thanks in advanced! If any more information is required to help please let me know so I can find it. Also, this is a Mid-2010 White Unibody Macbook.

Hello Michael Dixon2,
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
In order to troubleshoot this issue where the optical drive does not accept discs, please follow the steps below.
Doesn't accept discs
Be sure to check your disc to make sure it is flat. You can check this by putting the disc upside-down on a flat surface. If the disc is bowed up on any side or in the center, do not use the disc because it might get stuck in the drive. Do not use discs that have anything attached to them or dangling from them (such as "sweeper" or cleaning discs).
If the drive struggles when you put in a disc or stops part-way, carefully look at the disc for labels that may be interfering. If there aren't any raised labels then try putting the disc in a few more times.
Try another disc to see if the issue is being caused by a specific disc.
Make sure you insert the disc far enough for the drive mechanism to activate. You need to insert discs nearly all the way before the drive will activate and pull them in. If you don't completely insert a disc, the drive will reverse and push the disc back out.
Allow the drive one or two seconds to accept the disc while it is fully inserted.
Reset the System Management Controller (SMC).
If the drive repeatedly does not accept discs, contact Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider, or make an appointment with an Apple Retail Store.
Apple Computers: Troubleshooting the slot-loading SuperDrive - Apple Support
Cheers,
Alex H.

Change iDVD to burn on my faster internal optical drive?

I have a G4, OS 10.4.2, and iDVD 5. Is there any way I can configure iDVD to access my lower faster internal optical drive to burn my DVD's? If this is not available in iDVD 5, is it available in iDVD6?

Is there any way I can configure iDVD to access my lower faster internal optical drive to burn my DVD's?
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iDVD 6 allows me to switch drives in Project Info...
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Suggest you 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.
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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. Then click the Burn button.
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http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93006

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That error message is saying that it is attempting to setup a Time Capsule for Time Machine to backup your data on.
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lksj wrote:
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Hi bgardnerG5, and a warm welcome to the forums!
WD Caviar Black 2 TB Internal hard drive...
http://tinyurl.com/2bywnvz
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New internal optical drive : please suggest me a new one

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