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External vs Super Drive

thatoneguy82

thatoneguy82

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 23, 2008
1,895
2
Beach Cities, CA
So, I took out my super drive for the HDD. I have an external closure (2nd one) to put the drive in. It connects with a mini USB to 2 USB ports. I've tried everything I could do before with it externally and it was fine. However, when I was going to upgrade the firmware, I was unable to. It was a selection a selection at boot, but once selected it won't continue. I've tried several discs and cables already. And also this is why I got another external enclosure. So, I temporarily put the drive back in the MBP and it continued to boot from CD and the firmware upgrade was successful. These 2 closures couldn't do that outside the MBP. I'm wondering now if the Apple External SuperDrive would actually work as well. Has anyone ever tried this? Any experience? Anything I can do?
 
thatoneguy82 said:
So, I took out my super drive for the HDD. I have an external closure (2nd one) to put the drive in. It connects with a mini USB to 2 USB ports. I've tried everything I could do before with it externally and it was fine. However, when I was going to upgrade the firmware, I was unable to. It was a selection a selection at boot, but once selected it won't continue. I've tried several discs and cables already. And also this is why I got another external enclosure. So, I temporarily put the drive back in the MBP and it continued to boot from CD and the firmware upgrade was successful. These 2 closures couldn't do that outside the MBP. I'm wondering now if the Apple External SuperDrive would actually work as well. Has anyone ever tried this? Any experience? Anything I can do?
Click to expand...

Firmware flashing programs typically don't include USB support, only support over sata. This is why you can't flash firmware with a drive in a USB enclosure.
 
Seriously how often do you intend to flash the firmware of a optical drive. Those things are about as mature as can be. Hardly anybody would flash the firmware even once in a lifetime much less twice.
 
dusk007 said:
Seriously how often do you intend to flash the firmware of a optical drive. Those things are about as mature as can be. Hardly anybody would flash the firmware even once in a lifetime much less twice.
Click to expand...

True, but when you need to flash your firmware, be it for the computer, or SSD or hard-drive you may find it difficult without a built in optical drive.
 
maflynn said:
True, but when you need to flash your firmware, be it for the computer, or SSD or hard-drive you may find it difficult without a built in optical drive.
Click to expand...

This is what I thought. I guess even trying to see if the Apple made external drive won't work. I had a feeling this is what the problem is but wanted to confirm. Oh well, it's not important for me update my Momentus XT since I'm only using it as a second drive. I've already swapped it back once to update my SSD firmware. That area is too delicate to keep swapping it out.

Anyway, thanks for the confirmation.
 
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