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MY DVD drive died... My options to reinstall the OS?

hdsalinas

hdsalinas

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 28, 2006
397
0
San Pedro Sula, Honduras
My superdrive died on my 2 year old MBP.

I have been waiting for a few months now to get an extra $300 to replace the drive (price quote of a local authorized shop). I would like to replace my MBP for a new MB later next year and keep the old one for my wife. In that case, I should probably save the $300 towards the purchase of the new mac.

Meanwhile I have been transfering stuff I need to burn to my imac at work via wifi or USB drives. I was thinking of getting an external USB DVD drive just for the occasional burn. My question is, would I be able to reinstall (in case I needed) the OS form an USB DVD drive? I believe that from a firewire drive I might, but the chances of finding one here are very slim.

BTW. My drive wont read or write DVDs or CDs, originals or burned ones.

ANy thoughts?




.
 
If you format a FW drive (and probably a USB2 drive) with an 8 gb partition, you can then use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the Installer DVD to the partition. Of course, you still need a DVD drive to read the disc. Once on the FW drive, you can boot using Option at startup to select the drive. Installing from a FW drive is fast as heck - 10x or so faster than from a DVD.
 
You could buy the parts yourself on ebay and work from that if you want the drive fixed. Otherwise, the external drive is the best route.
 
Agree on the not needing the FW drive on your C2D. USB is bootable on those. A stated earlier you can use Carbon Copy or even SuperDuper to clone your current drive to an external and boot from there if needed, or even reinstall your OS from the USB external.

If you plan to keep the MBP, I don't see any reason to pay $300 to replace the internal unless you need the portability of that drive inside the machine. Only reasons I can think of to replace the internal drive is 1) portability - meaning you need to read and write discs on the go and don't want to carry an external around or 2) resale value.
 
Just replace the drive yourself. I've don it before, and its not too hard. Just take your time and keep track of which screws go where:D There are a ton of guides on http://www.ifixit.com/ and you can even order parts from there or eBay.

Good Luck
 
hdsalinas said:
My superdrive died on my 2 year old MBP.

I have been waiting for a few months now to get an extra $300 to replace the drive (price quote of a local authorized shop). I would like to replace my MBP for a new MB later next year and keep the old one for my wife. In that case, I should probably save the $300 towards the purchase of the new mac.
Click to expand...

If you don't use Time Machine yet, then my advice would be to buy an external hard drive (USB will do, FireWire is better but more expensive). Partition it with an 8 GB partition to hold the Leopard disk, and the rest for time machine backup. Find someone with a Mac and a DVD drive to copy the Leopard DVD onto the partition; Disk Utility will do that just fine. Now you have an emergency drive with an Install DVD (you might need it again, and it is a backup in case the DVD itself breaks as well), and you can use Time Machine for backups which I would absolutely recommend to do. Should be much much cheaper than the $300 for a new DVD drive (ouch). All Intel Macs can boot from USB drives.

If you try to do this with an 8 GB USB stick, please post whether it worked.
 
Well, i visited the ifixit website. They list the drive $149. Not bad at all.
I might just do it myself.

It is kind of embarrassing to tell people that my $2000 mac cant read or write their CDs.

Thanks for all your help!
 
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