I have the first gen aluminum iMac and I think my optical drive is pretty much dead. It makes this horrible scratching noise whenever I put a disc in and it'll try to read for half a minute before spitting it back out. Sometimes it even freezes the computer. Anyway, I'm just planning on getting an external USB DVD burner. Does anyone know if I can boot off the USB DVD drive?
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Optical Drive Died - Can I Boot from USB?
- Thread starter EatRiceInCal
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Should be able to. All Intel Macs support booting from the USB bus. Just hold the Option key when you turn on your Mac and wait for the bootable volumes screen (boot DVD must be inserted). The optical drives in the iMacs are notebook drives, and highly prone to fail. I've had three go out on my various Macs over the years.