Superdrive from Powermac in an external enclosure?

My powermac died. I pulled the superdrive out of it and dropped it into an enclosure to use with my laptop (12" Alluminum G4). The drive will read DVDs and CDs, but if I drop a blank disc in there I get a message that the media could not be read. Wondering if:
1. I need to buy Toast or some 3rd party authoring software.
2. I need to change jumper settings on the enclosure.
Folks who purchased this enclosure claim it works fine with mac/superdrive right out of the box, so I'm assuming the burn utility on my laptop doesn't support an external drive.
Anyone know?
Thanks.
Matthew

Which PowerMac did you pull it out of?
Here's what I can say based on my setups:
1) I have a PowerMac G4 Dual that only burns to DVD-R or DVD-RW discs. It won't play, read, or burn anything else.
2) My 12-inch PowerBook G4, last in the line, burns to DVD±R or DVD±RW discs. It will read, play, and burn anything out there. (Well, "anything" except _ DL discs or HD and Blu-Ray).
So assuming you have the same setup, that is probably why your PowerBook won't burn the discs. It is the media you are using. Make sure the disc media you use is supported by the PowerMac optical drive, and don't base it on your PowerBook's drive. Just because your PowerBook can support it, doesn't mean the new external drive you're using will support it too.

Similar Messages

Get files from PowerMac G3 to External Drive

My uncle has an old G3 with a lot of photos and most of a book he has written. We need to get that information off the old G3 and onto an external drive. The G3 is running 8.5 and has two firewire ports, but when I connect my external LaCie Rugged drive, it doesn't seem to recognize it. I can't remember much about getting around in 8.5, so I'm not sure where to start to move the files. It has a CD/ROM drive, but it's not a writable drive and the USB ports are only 1.1, so none of my external USB devices work either. I also tried connecting with ethernet, but no joy there because my MB Pro doesn't see it and it doesn't see my MB Pro. I turned on file sharing on both machines, but I'm sure I'm missing something with the old Mac. Target disk mode isn't an option since it's not supported pre OS 9. Any suggestions?
Oh, and while I'm at it, how high can I upgrade the OS? The machine runs perfectly, but it's way out of date. It's got 10 gb's of free space on the hard drive and is a PPC 2.33 ghz processor.

You could temporarily remove the G3's hard drive from the computer and use an adapter like this one, for connection to your MacBook via USB 2.0. Assuming that you have adequate hard drive capacity for transferring the files to the MacBook, you could then burn them to CDs/DVDs or to a USB flash drive. I upgraded my beige G3s with larger hard drives, more memory, CD burners, FireWire, and USB 1.1 ports, and a better graphics card, but I wouldn't recommend doing that today with a 11 year-old computer. If your uncle wants to keep using it, I'd suggest downloading/running the OS 8.6 Update (updates OS 8.5/8.5.1 to 8.6). If a beige G3 has adequate installed memory and hard drive space, it's officially supported up to Jaguar (OS 10.2.x), or to Panther (10.3.x) with the assistance of the downloadable "XPostFacto".

Mac mini 2009 mavericks won't boot. Blank display no logo,etc. Tried all keyboard boot functions, no help. replaced RAM w/known good. No help. Removed HD mounted in external enclosure and ran permissions and repair. No help. Upgraded HD to Yosemite a

Mac mini 2009 Mavericks won't boot. Chimes and power light comes on. USB ports have power. Blank display no logo,etc. Tried all keyboard boot functions, no help. Replaced RAM w/known good. No help. Removed HD and mounted in external enclosure and ran permissions and repair. No help. Upgraded HD to Yosemite and was able to boot another mini from HD mounted in external enclosure, reinstalled HD still no boot. Any ideas on how to proceed appreciated.

- Make an appointment at the Genius Bar of an Apple store. You have a hardware problem.
Apple Retail Store - Genius Bar

Original Powermac G5 HD in external enclosure

Hi all,
We're looking at removing the HD from the old studio PowerMac G5, and putting it in an external firewire enclosure. I've searched the net, and I've come across two enclosures - both my MacPower:
http://www.streetwise.com.au/productinfo.php?cPath=28_136&productsid=4510
http://www.streetwise.com.au/productinfo.php?cPath=28_136&productsid=5412
My problem is, I can't find any confirmation on the net on whether the original HD in a Powermac G5 is compatible with general 3.5" SATA enclosures. Can anybody confirm that this will work? Or if not, any alternatives?
Cheers,
Nathan

Nathan
Your PM G5 uses 3.5" SATA drives, then they will work fine in any 3.5" SATA external enclosure.
At this moment I'n running my old original system drive (160 3.5" SATA) in a Macally external FW enclosure with no porblem.
Hope that helps !
Alberto

Superdrive external enclosures that work with MBP?

I just replaced my superdrive in my Macbook Pro, and I want to put it in an external USB 2.0 enclosure that will work with OSX.
Can anyone recommend a inexpensive one that will be compatible with my MBP? OWC sells one for roughly $30, but I am seeing some enclosures on Amazon for $10-15, I just don't know which ones would be compatible

I think this would suit you, but it's also $30
http://www.powerbookmedic.com/SATA-Optical-Drive-Superdrive-Enclosure-for-Unibod y-Macbook-p-17424.html
These are $17and might work too
http://mac.macrecycling.com/slim-usb-20-cddvd-drive-external-enclosure-black-p-1 01458.html

MacBook Pro and External Enclosures

Just now updating from a PowerBook G4 to a brand new MacBook Pro...
I understand there may (will) be issues with trying to use FCP with Mavericks, but I'm really not wanting to switch to FCP X.
I would like to get a two-bay external enclosure to use with the new MBP. Can anyone offer suggestions? Does it need to be Thunderbolt to get the most out of my editing? And which drives would you suggest?
And do I REALLY need to migrate to FCP X? I'm currently editing with FCP 7 on my office MacPro. So if I do offline work on the MBP and then finish projects on the office MacPro, it makes sense to me to try to stick with FCP 7 for the workflow.
Thanks for listening...

For an external enclosure, I like this:
http://www.caldigit.com/T3/
or something from:
http://www.macgurus.com/store/Category/SATAEnclosures
Go with thunderbolt if you can afford it, you want the fastest interconnection possible and it certainly is an easy connection to your computer. If you are goiing with an eSata enclosure, you will need to look at a Thunderbolt PCIe Card box so you can put in a eSata raid card.
USB3 is also worth looking at, although I have had some problems with USB3 using port multiplied enclosures.
As Mr. Ross points out, there are options - including staying with FCP-7. The problem is that production world is changing at hyper-speed, and FCP-7 was killed several years ago. There will soon come a time when the third-party workarounds to get contemporary standards of media in and out of FCP will become too difficult and time consuming to make it worth while.
So while FCP-7 is and always will be a great editor for those who know how to use it - it certainly is time to consider another NLE.
MtD

Can I move Time Capsule hard drive to an external enclosure for faster restore (or initial back-up)?

I upgraded my Time Capsule with a 4TB hard drive. I just backed up 500GB of data from a MacBook Pro with Time Machine and it took almost an entire day over a wired gigabit connection. The next MacBook Pro I need to back up has more than 2TB of data, so I'm anticipating that the process will take nearly four days. The slow speed of the Time Capsule leaves me with two questions...
1. If I ever need to restore my entire system from the Time Capsule, can I remove the drive from the Time Capsule, install it in an external hard drive enclosure and restore from that as it will be a much faster USB 3.0 connection than through the Time Capsule itself?
2. To save the time of waiting four days for the initial Time Machine back-up, can I remove the drive from the Time Capsule, install it in an external enclosure to do the first back-up and then put it back in the Time Capsule for future back-ups?
Thank you.

2. To save the time of waiting four days for the initial Time Machine back-up, can I remove the drive from the Time Capsule, install it in an external enclosure to do the first back-up and then put it back in the Time Capsule for future back-ups?
The answer to this is no.. TM backup is done differently on a local drive .. cf a network drive. The network drive must have the backup inside a sparsebundle.. you can read the backup locally and it is vaguely possible to backup files from local to sparsebundle but you are still going to find TM is pretty finicky if it finds you tampered with its internals.
I agree with Kappy .. if you want to use local backups just use USB3 drive.. it is a bit unfair to compare.. as USB3 is 5Gbps connection whilst ethernet is only 1Gbps.. you might also find the speed in the backup is limited by sheer mechanical drive performance.. figures are always quoted for single large files but when you copy heaps of small files.. a mechanical drive takes a lot of time writing file allocations.. even if the actual file write is short.. it takes a long time relative to track after track of large file copying.
Let me add a few things.. 500GB disk in the MBP is not the quickest.. they are usually the slow 5400rpm drives.. unless you replaced it.
Our experience of TC suggests a speed of around 50GB/hr average doing backups.. but it is essential that you turn off wireless.. otherwise you will slow it down.. It is also important IPv6 is set correctly to link-local only and you cannot trust auto to get that right.. you need to set it.
If you still cannot achieve average speed of around 50GB/hr something is wrong.. either you are not getting full gigabit or something is slow.. test with the single large file eg 1GB over ethernet and see.. you should manage speed of around 50MBytes/sec.. (it can vary from 30-60 however... ).
It can take a long long time to do 2TB.. if that is all internal then perhaps look at using TM for the boot drive only.. you surely have it partitioned.. or multiple disks.. and use Carbon Copy Cloner for the other partitions.. it is not that it will go any faster.. but that you can separate out the tasks easier.

HELP ! Two SATA drives in an external enclosure RAID ZERO. Need data recovery.

What a nightmare !     My neighbor died from esophageal cancer and the funeral is in one week. He left behind a G5 2.5 DP tower with a dead motherboard, and he put the two 640 GB SATA drives in an Other World Computing external enclosure Mercury Elite Pro Dual) weeks before he expired. He got access to these drives in this enclosure. (External RAIDs are a no-no).
His grieving wife wants pictures extracted from the drives. There is no known back up and the G5 tower cannot be found.
When connecting the external enclosure by FW800 or USB3, the need to format flag pops up. Disk Utility shows one 1400 GB drive "unformatted".    The DIP switches on the enclosure are set to RAID 0.   Several data recovery programs find files, but of course any jpg over 50kb looks like venetian blinds, Tried Data Rescue 3, and the drive depicted as 1280 GB does not divide using expert features and the command key, thus a RAID SET for emulation cannot be formed. See here: See here: http://www.prosofteng.com/blog/recovering-data-from-a-apple-raid-using-data-resc ue-3-by-prosoft-engineering-2/
What to do now to recover jpg's intact and ASAP ?
1. Try another enclosure ?
2. Insert these drives into my personal G5 tower ?
3. Try different data recovery software ?
4. Which software other than Data Rescue will recover from two drives in one external enclosure believed to be RAID ZERO ?
Thank you.

Yes, if and when the tower can be located and retrieved.   In one communication it was described as a G4, in another, a G5.
Turns out that a single external drive was found, so suspect that is the boot drive. In the mean time, am doing an emulated recovery (two sets) using two converter boxes to isolate the two SATA drives, assuming RAID 0 and 32kb striped,   The two sets and because the drive order is unknown.   The first recovery is almost completed.
BTW, OWC rep stated that the two drives cannot be read in their dual SATA enclosure. The rep stated that the drives would have to be reformatted while in thier enclosure, then use. Tried two enclosures to see if they would read the drives independently, and one brand had a silly interface.   One has to put in two "dummy drives" (or ones in which the data is not important) and then convert the electronics (reset switch + power button) to RAID 0.

No boot when HD inside machine, just fine in external enclosure

I have a mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro that's having a strange problem. It crashed hard last night while I was typing something- just froze solid, couldn't force quit, then the mouse pointer stopped.
Shut it down with the power button, started it again, got the "not permitted" symbol (circle with a line through it). Restarted with my Tiger emergency USB boot drive and the hard drive didn't show up in Disk Utility. Whoa! Restarted with a Cmd - Opt - P - R, no change.
I pulled the hard drive and put it in an external enclosure that I have. It mounted just fine on my iMac so I backed up all of my data, then plugged the drive in to the MacBook to see what would happen- lo and behold the MacBook booted just fine with the drive attached in the external enclosure! It worked perfectly!
At this point, I had no drive installed in the MacBook, the MacBook's hard drive was attached via an external USB enclosure, and I booted the machine via the Lion USB rescue utility. I ran Disk Utility thinking that it would have all sorts of errors to report, but the partition showed no problems. I repaired permissions for good measures, then put the drive back in to the MacBook. Again, I got the "not permitted" symbol.
I tried booting from the USB rescue drive- when I went to Disk Utility the drive showed up but the system hanged when I selected it. I restarted with the Snow Leopard DVD inserted but it froze before loading the setup process (I assume when it was trying to mount a file system from the HD).
I run Windows 7 in a Boot Camp config on this machine as well, so just for fun I tried to start from the Windows partition. To my surprise, it booted just fine from Windows. On top of that, once in Windows I had no trouble accessing the Mac partition.
I decided at that point that maybe something had gone awry that I couldn't see and that I should repartition the drive. I put it back in the external enclosure, booted the MacBook from the Snow Leopard DVD, used Disk Utility to repartition the drive, put it BACK in the MacBook and tried to boot from the Snow Leopard disc again- and it crashed in the same place. I rebooted from the Lion rescue drive and tried to use Disk Utility to check the drive- DU crashed when I selected the hard drive.
As a last-ditch effort, I swapped out the RAM and tried again. No go.
At this point, I'm really hoping it's a problem with the hard drive, but seeing as though it works great from an external enclosure, I don't know what to think. I don't have any other 2.5" SATA drives to test in the machine so I have to assume that other than a failed SATA controller, firmware, or other logic board problem, it must be the drive, right?

I dug up another hard drive and tested it just to make sure- same symptoms. A little Googling seems to reveal that this is a common failure.
Will pursue a new cable. Thanks again, folks.

I want to replace the hard drive on my IMac but want to know how to transfer from the time machine external hard drive to the replacement drive?

I have reached capacity on my IMac hard drive. It is a 250 GB drive. I have an external drive backing up using the time machine utility. My question is once I replace the HD on the IMac, how do I load the new drive with the back up from the external drive?

So many possibilities.
I am not an expert, but I have learned this much is doable:
Buy an external enclosure to re-use you old drive.
Buy a new external drive at least as large as as your intended new internal drive. Make it self-powered.
Download CarbonCopyClone (free download, relatively small).
Make a CCC clone of the original disk on the new external disk
Install the original disk in the external enclosure.
Install the new disk in the main system.
Boot from that new external drive that has the carbon copy clone. CCC will be installed on it and it will be bootable.
Use CCC on the external to directly clone back to new drive you install in the main system (the "bootable" flag will copy).
NOTE THAT AT NO TIME IS YOUR ORIGINAL DISK BEING OVERWRITTEN IN THIS PROCESS. YOU CAN ALWAYS GO BACK AND REINSTALL IT.
Step 1 makes your old disk resuable as a spare copy for "anything".
Step 2 gives you something to use as CCC for after the recovery process.
Step 3 gets the software needed for cloning
Step 4 makes a bootable saved copy of your current system
Step 5 shifts your old disk to a usable place
Step 6 positions your new disk
Step 7 boots your existing install of OSX (just from a different drive)
Step 8 puts your original install on your new disk.
Now you have a bootable larger hard drive, and a bootable copy on a drive large enough to save all you can store on your new internal drive. And you have your old disk to use for "anything".
Now you have TM backup in one place, and CCC backup in another.
Two backups is better than one, and one of your backups is bootable in case of system failure.

Old iMac hard drive to external enclosure

The logic board on my old iMac (20" core duo...2006 model) but the hard drive is ok. I'd like to put it into an external enclosure but can't get it to fit.
1/ there's an external chip/connector on the side, half way down that blocks it fitting into the enclosure. I've never seen this on a hard drive before. What is this and what can I do to it (ie, remove it, ignore it etc)
2/ When it connects, it soon disconnects itself (a mater of seconds). Does this have anything to do with the chip on the side?
Basically, how can I get this done?
Any help appreciated.

Hi John,
It's a 2.5" drive. I would go with a firewire enclosure so you can boot from it. http://www.macsales sells a good one.

Why did apple remove the superdrive from the current mac mini model?

Also why does the standalone superdrive (USD $79) ONLY work with server version of the current Mac Mini? Does not make sense. Was just thinking of buying a mac mini when they changed the line about 2 months ago. I still use DVD's and CD's as I am sure a lot of people out there still do.
It has made me rethink the purchase of the current mac mini - since the standalone superdrive only works with the server version. I wanted to purchase the 2.3Ghz - 500 GB version - but if that does not work with the superdrive - then no good for me.
The Intel core 2 core duo was the one I wanted and it was perfect for me - but the day I went to purchase was the day the new version was announced - apple is not even offering refurbished one of this model (I have looked at that area of www.apple.com) and everywhere I look on ebay for this version - people are selling them for so much more. I wanted to buy this new from apple.
Getting rid of the drive was not the best idea just yet - CD's and DVD's are still so ubiquitious.
Anyone have any other suggestions on how to get my hands on a brand new Intel core 2 duo from apple?
I already have an Imac and a Macbook Pro already wanted to add to my apple collection.

The description:
External SuperDrive
Compact and convenient, the external MacBook Air SuperDrive connects to your Mac mini with a single USB cable. It lets you install new software and play and burn both CDs and DVDs, including double-layer DVDs.
Everything you need in an optical drive.
You can play and burn both CDs and DVDs with the MacBook Air SuperDrive connected to your Mac mini. It's perfect when you want to watch a DVD movie, install software, create backup discs, and more.
The essence of simplicity.
You'll never have to worry about lost cables with the MacBook Air SuperDrive. There’s no power adapter, and it connects to your Mac mini with a single USB cable that's built into the SuperDrive.
Technical Details
Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Writes DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL discs at up to 4x speed
Writes DVD-R and DVD+R discs at up to 8x speed
Writes DVD-RW at up to 6x speed and DVD+RW discs at up to 8x speed
Reads DVDs at up to 8x speed
Writes CD-R discs at up to 24x speed
Writes CD-RW discs at up to 16x speed
Reads CDs at up to 24x speed
I don't see where this says it only works with OS X Server.

Bus-powered external enclosure, too many choices.

Hi, I'm shopping for an external enclosure for my Macbook's Sata drive as I just ordered a 7200 Hitachi drive as a replacement, I would like the enclosure to be bus-powered, firewire is a good option but not necessary.
I noticed there are a few on eBay with those characteristics, are they any good. Checked the ones on Newegg (even though they don't ship to Canada), and they are a little more expensive. There is also one that seems nice on OWC but it's pretty expensive at 80$.
Not sure if I can trust the ones on eBay, what are you guys using/usggesting ?
Francis.

Hi
I did exactly the same thing a couple of months ago so that I could save money with the white macbook versus the black. I bought a 120GB drive for my iBook and switched it with the shipped one when the machine arrived from the Apple Store. Result = I get a better specified machine than was available on line (and in white) and a removable 60GB drive with bus power, firewire 800/400 and USB 2.0.
To get to the point buy one of these:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=736770&tstart=30
works a dream, is neat and compact, comes with useful short wires, can be powered if necessary, and looks cool.
I searched for a long time and the OWC enclosure was easily the best for me, even to import to the UK (i.e need to add on a few pounds sterling for customs - still way cheaper and better than alternatives).
David
macbook, PM G4s & G5s, PBG4, iMac G4 & G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)
PM G4 & G5s, PBG4, iMac G4 & G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)
PM G4 & G5s, PBG4, iMac G4 & G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

External Enclosure Not Recognized

Hi,
I replaced my Powerbook G4's internal IDE HDD with a larger one, and put the old one in a USB external enclosure. I cloned the old hard drive onto the new one so my computer would be the same, but with more hard drive space. *I want to use the old hard drive in the external enclosure as an external hard drive.* However, when I plug it in to my computer, no disk image shows up on my desktop. It does show up on other computers.
My questions are:
1. Should I use disk utility to reformat the old hard drive that is in the external enclosure?
2. If so, can I do this from another computer?
Thanks so much for any help

Davidvuk: It isn't clear whether you're talking about just one of your external USB drives or both of them. Would you please clarify which it is? Also, please assure us that you have formatted the drives. You should be able to do so after connecting them to a desktop Mac, if you have one available to use. If either of the drives fails to appear in Disk Utility when connected to a desktop Mac, I suspect there's a bad drive, a bad cable, or a bad enclosure involved.
If neither drive shows up in Disk Utility or System Profiler on your Powerbook, and you're using diffferent cables for them, I wonder whether your Powerbook's USB ports are working. Do you have any other USB device(s) that work when connected to the ports on the PB? A flash drive or a USB card reader is an ideal testing device because it requires very little power from the bus.
If both drives work properly when connected to another Mac, and both USB ports on your Powerbook work with at least some other device(s) connected to them, there's a power problem in the PB or the drive enclosure(s). Assuming you're doing all this testing with the Powerbook connected to AC power, can you test using a different AC adapter?

External Enclosure with out a fan

I bought a 250 gig Sata internal hard drive a while back and want to put it in an external enclosure for my video files to edit off of. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a huge selection of Sata firewire enclosures available. I found a couple from Coolgear.
Using it for video editing, would I be making a mistake using an aluminum enclosure without a fan?
Does anyone have any recommendation of specific enclosures they would recommend. I'm a hobbyist, so price is always a concern.
Thanks for your help.

Thanks for your input Alchroma. Unfortunately, when you throw in the SATA into the mix, you will find the options are very limited, especially with firewire. Most Externals right now are made for IDE drives. Coolgear makes a couple of enclosures, one with and one without the fan. I was very surprised when I started researching for an external enclosure how limited the SATA enclosures were. Kind of regret not going IDE at this time. I just didn't know at the time. Probably the reason is, you don't really benefit from the extra speed a SATA drive has to offer when it is in a 400FW enclosure.

Superdrive from Powermac in an external enclosure?

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