Okay ladies and gents, after being away from my iMac for a long two weeks, it came back to me this morning working better than ever 
I had to mail it off to MacMedics to get the optical drive replaced so, naturally, the first time I tried when getting it back was playing a DVD.
Immediately after inserting the DVD I noticed the new optical drive sounded much different than the old one that my iMac shipped with.
It wasn't as loud, didn't spin so frantically, and wasn't stopping and starting several times over. So I decided to look under "About This Mac" and to my surprise they replaced the defective Panasonic (Matsushita) drive with a Pioneer drive, which I have heard nothing but great things about here on the forums.
So my question is: Should I buy an external drive to use and reserve my internal drive? Or will the Pioneer drive still be working several years (most certainly longer than the 2 years the Panasonic drive lasted) down the road?
I had to mail it off to MacMedics to get the optical drive replaced so, naturally, the first time I tried when getting it back was playing a DVD.
Immediately after inserting the DVD I noticed the new optical drive sounded much different than the old one that my iMac shipped with.
It wasn't as loud, didn't spin so frantically, and wasn't stopping and starting several times over. So I decided to look under "About This Mac" and to my surprise they replaced the defective Panasonic (Matsushita) drive with a Pioneer drive, which I have heard nothing but great things about here on the forums.
So my question is: Should I buy an external drive to use and reserve my internal drive? Or will the Pioneer drive still be working several years (most certainly longer than the 2 years the Panasonic drive lasted) down the road?