Macbook Combo Drive

[thomahawk]

Alright. so i have a macbook 2.1ghz the one that has a combo drive. is there a way for me to change it out for a superdrive? like if i take it to apple and ask them to install one for me..
how much do you think they will charge and will they do it for me?

 

[sickmacdoc]

You might best be served by checking for nearby Apple Authorized Service Providers. Most of them will be happy to swap in a SuperDrive for you for parts and labor. You can check for a nearby Service Provider here: http://www.apple.com/buy/locator/service/

I don't believe the techs at the Apple retail stores do that as they normally just provide warranty service, but it would of course be worth a phone call to ask assuming there is a retail store near you.

 

[windowpain]

If you are feeling adventurous, you could try doing it yourself.

Here is the drive going for $200.

And here is a guide for replacing it.

I would imagine that they would charge about $200 to replace it for you (just a guess.)

You might be better off spending the money towards a new macbook. Maybe wait till they bring out new ones and get a cheap 'old' model.

You might also want to look at an external burner. I Have one similar to this. and It works well. Even saves me a lot of time having two DVD players when I'm making copies of disks.

 

[sickmacdoc]

Yeah, I have got to agree with windowpain here- when push comes to shove an external burner actually does make a lot of sense particularly since the slot loading drives that Apple uses are, to be kind, not the greatest burners ever made. I had blinders on when trying to answer the specific question asked, without seeing the bigger picture.

The advantage to two drives really can't be understated (hence the option Apple provided to run two internally on the Mac Pro- the second drive was the first addition I did to mine after adding an extra 8Gb of RAM!).

Edit: After looking at the drive link windowpain included, I see by the model number that it is a Matshita drive- which are widely noted as being problematic burners. I have had three client Macbook's Matshita drives replaced under warranty because of burning issues- but of course that does not mean they are all bad!

Also looking at that info it reminded me of another advantage of using an external- most externals will be using the higher 16x-22x burning rates of almost all full height tray loading external drives available now. For comparison the internal slot loaders (like this one) will be capable of a max. burn speed of 8x on single layer DVDs. it is also does not list double layer capability, which virtually all external drives will be able to burn.