Share a DVD drive between macs

[GregE]

Hi all,

My sister has an iMac and her daughter has a Macbook. Her daughter has Office for Students and they want to load it on the iMac. She said her DVD drive won't read 1 of the 4 CD's and Apple said they won't replace the drive since it is only the 1 CD. They tried to sell her an external drive or a firewire cable. Sounds like a load of c**p to me.

Could she load the CD into the Macbook and then share the drive thru her network? Any other ideas you can think of for her to try? I think I have an extra firewire cable that she can borrow but thought I would consult my brothers and sisters on here first.

TIA

 

[Eidorian]

What kind of iMac?

 

[GregE]

Hers is a fairly new 20" aluminum. I think it's the 2.4 GHz with 2 GB RAM and 320GB HD.

 

[Eidorian]

You can boot the MacBook into target disk mode and use the optical drive over FireWire.

 

[GregE]

That's probably why they were trying to sell her a firewire cable. I was hoping her daughter could just share the drive thru their home network like you can with a PC.

Do you think they could copy the files off the CD drive to a folder on the MacBook and then share the folder over the network and move them to the iMac?

Or could they just enter the registration code into the Office trial that came preloaded onto the iMac?

I think she should just "tell" them that other CD's and DVD's are failing and have the local Apple store replace the drive.

 

[Consultant]

That's probably why they were trying to sell her a firewire cable. I was hoping her daughter could just share the drive thru their home network like you can with a PC.

Do you think they could copy the files off the CD drive to a folder on the MacBook and then share the folder over the network and move them to the iMac?

Or could they just enter the registration code into the Office trial that came preloaded onto the iMac?

I think she should just "tell" them that other CD's and DVD's are failing and have the local Apple store replace the drive.

Lying wont solve the problem. The problem needs to be demonstrated as reproducible with an unbiased piece of media (which the store would have). Otherwise it is a waste of time and money for everyone involved. Since it's 1 disk, it's most likely problem with THAT disk.

But you are in luck. Yes, a CD drive can be shared over a network on the Mac.

However, there are many ways to have a network. Most people do not have gigabit ethernet (although all current macs have Gigabit ethernet built in), thus a portion of people will trying to do it through 100bit ethernet which isn't too bad. But some people will try to do it through wireless networking (in the worst case could be wireless B, which is extremely slow).

The reason they offer firewire cable is to to prevent uninformed people from saying, I shared my drive (via 820.11B router) on my macs, and the mac network sharing is slow (due only to user error, when the correct way is to connect through gigabit ethernet).

 

[GregE]

Lying wont solve the problem. The problem needs to be demonstrated as reproducible with an unbiased piece of media (which the store would have). Otherwise it is a waste of time and money for everyone involved. Since it's 1 disk, it's most likely problem with THAT disk.

But the MacBook can read the disk.

But you are in luck. Yes, a CD drive can be shared over a network on the Mac.

However, there are many ways to have a network. Most people do not have gigabit ethernet (although all current macs have Gigabit ethernet built in), thus a portion of people will trying to do it through 100bit ethernet which isn't too bad. But some people will try to do it through wireless networking (in the worst case could be wireless B, which is extremely slow).

The reason they offer firewire cable is to to prevent uninformed people from saying, I shared my drive (via 820.11B router) on my macs, and the mac network sharing is slow (due only to user error, when the correct way is to connect through gigabit ethernet).

So how do you do it?