Internal MacPro DVD drive sucks!

[miniConvert]

"PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-111D"

Yay, I guess that means I got a good'n... I was about to say that I didn't have any gripes about my drive, I assume this is why.

 

[Trippy Jr]

I just replace my drive because the drawer on my Sony got snapped off.

The only problem so far is that sometimes, when the new drive has a DVD or CD in it, it doesn't open when I use the eject key. Rather, it spins down, unmounts, and then just mounts up again. I have to use the eject menu to get it to open up properly, sometimes.

This is a Pioneer 111, too. Oh, and for some reason, it's much noisier on some DVDs than other ones (loud enough to be annoying, but probably only because I have sensitive hearing).

 

[dkoralek]

the 2 extra sata connections are not in the optical drive cage, they are actually below, in the main pci/hdd area, near the airport card. The exact purpose is not known... but it is nice that they are there.

It has been reported elsewhere that this is the case (and we may know once Apple starts shipping blu ray drives which may use sata). I can't think of any other reason that they would be there.

cheers.

 

[dkoralek]

It has been reported elsewhere that this is the case (and we may know once Apple starts shipping blu ray drives which may use sata). I can't think of any other reason that they would be there.

cheers.

BTW, if you look at the Apple developer site conceptual diagram of the Mac Pro, it is quite clear that the two extra SATA ports are for internal optical drives:

I have yet to figure out why there has been all this talk about them being mysterious. Apple doesn't advertise them, probably because they want you to buy your second drive from them, and they only provide ATA drives at the moment.

cheers.

 

[synth3tik]

I also got the DVR-111D. I don't trust Sony to save my life...

 

[slughead]

I also got the DVR-111D. I don't trust Sony to save my life...

If Sony had the chance, they would eat you and your entire family.

 

[product26]

If Sony had the chance, they would eat you and your entire family.

no.. they would just slap a sony logo on you and sell you for more money.

 

[ReanimationLP]

Hey, my NEC DVD burner in my PC is rather quiet, and fast. Its the 3540 series. Burns at 16x, or 48x for CDs.

Now, if you want to see a LOUD CD burner, look at a Samsung 252 burner. My god. Sounded like a jetplane.

The SATA ports underneath the drive bays are probably meant for if you buy a newer SATA burner. Yes, they do make such a beast.

 

[dkoralek]

Hey, my NEC DVD burner in my PC is rather quiet, and fast. Its the 3540 series. Burns at 16x, or 48x for CDs.

Now, if you want to see a LOUD CD burner, look at a Samsung 252 burner. My god. Sounded like a jetplane.

The SATA ports underneath the drive bays are probably meant for if you buy a newer SATA burner. Yes, they do make such a beast.

If you check out the image (that I just put inline my response above), it is clear that these two ports are meant for SATA optical drives.

 

[TheSpaz]

I tried flashing my Sony drive using the method linked here: http://www.hardmac.com/articles/62/page1/

It worked well (little loud but, it was working). Then I accidentally left a DVD in the drive overnight and the next day, the DVD wouldn't spin back up again and paralyzed my system completely and I had to reboot. So, I put the old Firmware back on it because it seems to be stable. So, just a warning to you people who are performing this hack on their Sony drives.

 

[synth3tik]

Apple puts either a Sony or a Pioneer DVD-RW in the Mac Pro. I had the Sony (which sucks butt) but replaced it with the Pioneer. I bought it from OWC for $30. It is the Apple branded drive. I can now really kick ass when ripping and burning.

 

[timish]

I bought a Mac Pro 3.0Ghz with Dual superdrives. When I was burning two large ISO's at a time in toast, it would take FOREVER!

When I was only burning one ISO image at a time, it was normal and fast like it should be. I would have assumed they would have put the two super drives on a separate ATA bus to alleviate the problem I was having, since it's a PRO machine right? Apparently that's not the case, and Apple should have just architected a dual superdrive machine like the way I did in the end. Read on.

Anyway, I re-evaluated Apple's "Mac Pro" Superdrive architecture and tossed them both in the garbage.

I went out on a limb and bought two top of the line Plextor 755SA SATA DVD burners and installed them in place of the crappy Sony stupid drives that were there originally.

Problem solved.

Now I have BETTER drives both on their own separate SATA bus and I can burn two ISO's or whatever or copy disc to disc with no slowdown.

Literally with Apple's config, burning two DVD's at the same time took 45 minutes instead of 6.

 

[higginsoft]

I tried putting a Plextor PX-760A in my Mac Pro 2.6GHz. It recognized it ok, but the drawer won't open. Seems the front of the tray may be too large for the opening slot in the case, but I suppose it could be a misalignment.

Any ideas?

 

[higginsoft]

Came across this at: http://swik.net/sony+apple

Oh, those tricky engineers over at Apple; how they love to slip little treats inside their boxes. Recently we found out that Cupertino had surreptitiously included 802.11n chips from Broadcom into its latest lineup of all-in-one iMacs, and now we've learned that many of the SuperDrives in the Mac Pro are even more super than their spec sheets or current functionality would have led us to believe. The good folks over at HardMac decided to find out the real deal behind Sony's DW-D150A DVD burner that ships with most Mac Pros (the others sport a Pioneer DVR-111D), and after disassembling the drive and doing a little research, discovered that this previously-unknown model is actually just a rebadged NEC ND-4570A. Normally such a revelation wouldn't be very interesting, except for the fact that NEC's version of the burner touts superior performance and more features than Apple endowed the Sony with, and a fairly simple firmware tweak is all it takes to make your SuperDrive even more powerful. We won't go into the specifics of the hack here, but after you've successfully followed the instructions laid out in the Read link, your drive will suddenly be able to burn DVD-RAMs and dual layer DVD-Rs, write CD-R discs at 48x (as is, these SuperDrives max out at 32x), and perhaps best of all, read DVDs from around the world (i.e. the new firmware is region-free). Next up for Team HardMac? Getting ahold of some LabelFlash-compatible discs and attempting a firmware update to the ND-4571 -- soon, your Mac Pro may be able to get its label on as well.

 

[trainguy77]

Came across this at: http://swik.net/sony+apple

Oh, those tricky engineers over at Apple; how they love to slip little treats inside their boxes. Recently we found out that Cupertino had surreptitiously included 802.11n chips from Broadcom into its latest lineup of all-in-one iMacs, and now we've learned that many of the SuperDrives in the Mac Pro are even more super than their spec sheets or current functionality would have led us to believe. The good folks over at HardMac decided to find out the real deal behind Sony's DW-D150A DVD burner that ships with most Mac Pros (the others sport a Pioneer DVR-111D), and after disassembling the drive and doing a little research, discovered that this previously-unknown model is actually just a rebadged NEC ND-4570A. Normally such a revelation wouldn't be very interesting, except for the fact that NEC's version of the burner touts superior performance and more features than Apple endowed the Sony with, and a fairly simple firmware tweak is all it takes to make your SuperDrive even more powerful. We won't go into the specifics of the hack here, but after you've successfully followed the instructions laid out in the Read link, your drive will suddenly be able to burn DVD-RAMs and dual layer DVD-Rs, write CD-R discs at 48x (as is, these SuperDrives max out at 32x), and perhaps best of all, read DVDs from around the world (i.e. the new firmware is region-free). Next up for Team HardMac? Getting ahold of some LabelFlash-compatible discs and attempting a firmware update to the ND-4571 -- soon, your Mac Pro may be able to get its label on as well.

Read the thread before posting...look at post #9

EDIT: or post 13

 

[timish]

I tried putting a Plextor PX-760A in my Mac Pro 2.6GHz. It recognized it ok, but the drawer won't open. Seems the front of the tray may be too large for the opening slot in the case, but I suppose it could be a misalignment.

Any ideas?

You have to take part of the tray off.

Did you look at the other superdrive tray that came stock in the machine?

The Plextor's drive tray has a piece in the front that comes off, and is required to get it to work in the Mac Pro.

It is the part of the tray that has all the logos and junk on it. It pivots up and is easily removed.

I can verify that two PX-760A's work in the Mac Pro, and two Px-755SA's work fine on the two "unused" SATA ports on the board.

This is the way the machine should have shipped in a "Pro" configuration.

 

[dkoralek]

You have to take part of the tray off.

Did you look at the other superdrive tray that came stock in the machine?

The Plextor's drive tray has a piece in the front that comes off, and is required to get it to work in the Mac Pro.

It is the part of the tray that has all the logos and junk on it. It pivots up and is easily removed.

I can verify that two PX-760A's work in the Mac Pro, and two Px-755SA's work fine on the two "unused" SATA ports on the board.

This is the way the machine should have shipped in a "Pro" configuration.

Out of curiosity, do you know if windows will recognize the optical drives? As stated above, those two sata ports are, in fact, meant for optical drives. But people have observed that windows won't recognized hard drives connected to those sata ports. was wondering if it would recognize optical drives there.

cheers.

 

[timish]

Out of curiosity, do you know if windows will recognize the optical drives? As stated above, those two sata ports are, in fact, meant for optical drives. But people have observed that windows won't recognized hard drives connected to those sata ports. was wondering if it would recognize optical drives there.

cheers.

FYI: yes I can in fact confirm that Windows XP SP2 running under Parallels does recognize the drives, however I am only able to manipulate/use one of the drives due to limitations with Parallels and having two optical drives in the Mac Pro.

Hope that answers your question. As for Boot Camp I have no idea because I don't use/evaluate that product.

 

[higginsoft]

Thanks,

The front plate didn't "swivil" off, but it did pop off, and the drive works fine.

 

[timish]

Thanks,

The front plate didn't "swivil" off, but it did pop off, and the drive works fine.

I'll send you my bill!

LOL!

 

[twoodcc]

I just put in a Lite-On LH-20A1H 20x20 DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive Lightscribe drive to my Mac Pro 2.0, running OS 10.4.8. I just followed the directions on "replacing an optical drive" in Apples little owners booklet that came with my Mac Pro. It went right in and then was immediately recognized by Mac OS 10.4.8.

So the answer to your question would be Yes!!

FWIW the Lite-on drive is a bit quieter than the original Sony superdrive in my Mac Pro, to my ears anyway, and a whole lot faster. It ripped a cd into iTunes at an average of 37-40 X compared to 17-20 times for the same disk on the Sony, and burned a copy of a 1 hour home made DVD from my Sony in under 4 minutes using Toast 6. Very happy with the drive.

so can you use the lighscribe part in Mac OS X? with Toast or something?

 

[slughead]

so can you use the lighscribe part in Mac OS X? with Toast or something?

You have to use a separate application.

Lightscribe sucks from what I've read anyway.. 30 minutes to print 1 disc? meh.

 

[dschinghis]

I tried flashing my Sony drive using the method linked here: http://www.hardmac.com/articles/62/page1/

It worked well (little loud but, it was working). Then I accidentally left a DVD in the drive overnight and the next day, the DVD wouldn't spin back up again and paralyzed my system completely and I had to reboot. So, I put the old Firmware back on it because it seems to be stable. So, just a warning to you people who are performing this hack on their Sony drives.

I had exactly the same problem after flashing my Sony drive. Apparently, after 10 minutes dirve goes to sleep and never wakes up if there is a disk inside it. I went to preferences/power saving and disabled hdd/optical drive sleep check box. After that problem dissapeared. I have seen alternative fix on macosxhints.com for the problem ( small daemon which access optical drive every 9-th minute ).

 

[knight.steveo]

I can't burn a CD on my DVR-111

Just the other day all was fine, I imported a audio disk to iTunes, then went to burn one and I could not get a cd to mount.
Crazy thing I am able to Burn a DVD.

My Drive will not recognize and CD/CDR.

Has anyone have any Ideas???

I am running:
MacPro 2.66
OSX 10.4.8

SteveO

 

[d.cleveland]

Lite-on...door

I just put in a Lite-On LH-20A1H 20x20 DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive Lightscribe drive to my Mac Pro 2.0, running OS 10.4.8. I just followed the directions on "replacing an optical drive" in Apples little owners booklet that came with my Mac Pro. It went right in and then was immediately recognized by Mac OS 10.4.8.

So the answer to your question would be Yes!!

FWIW the Lite-on drive is a bit quieter than the original Sony superdrive in my Mac Pro, to my ears anyway, and a whole lot faster. It ripped a cd into iTunes at an average of 37-40 X compared to 17-20 times for the same disk on the Sony, and burned a copy of a 1 hour home made DVD from my Sony in under 4 minutes using Toast 6. Very happy with the drive.

-----
Hi there Paxx and all. I'm a newbie here in NYC. I bought the new lite-on LH-20A1H-184 drive. The "Geniuses" at the Apple Store couldn't figure out that the door had to be removed, just like it was from the original Sony superdrive, in order for the tray to fit through the MacPro door. I was installing this drive in addition to the internal Sony drive that came with my MacPro.

I removed the door and put in the drive. It burns beautifully and lightscribe is great (someone gifted me the drive). However, I'm having these issues:

• When opening the lite-on drive the tray creeps very slowly to the halfway point then stalls. I have to pull it to slide it all the way out.
• When it closes it is very slow in doing so. I can't hear any scraping sound of any sort (it doesn't close/open as quickly as the Sony drive above it)
• Is this a leveling issue? If yes, how do I fix this?
• Are people putting their new optical/dvd drives in the lower bay or in the top one?

Or...would you return the drive to NewEgg since door on the drive may be the issue? How would I test this? Since NewEgg is OEM, the drive came in an anti-static bag with no manual. Obviously I can't have my MacPro powered up and open while I pushing the eject button.

Thanks for any leads on this...

Don