Graphite iMac DV's Internal CD/DVD has died.

[gapstr]

The slot-loading CD/DVD read-only drive in my graphite iMac has died. I'd appreciate recommendations for replacements. The way I see it, I have two options:

1.  Replace the internal drive. I have opened up beige Macs to do this sort of transplant surgery, but this seems to be a very different matter with non-flatscreen iMacs. I don't want to break the case. Is this something that can be disassembled then reasembled with a reasonable chance of success? Are bootable replacement drives that will fit and work here readily available from Apple or third party sources? As long as I have to replace this anyway, a writeable drive would be nice. Will installing a CDRW drive internally work on an iMac which originally only had a read-only drive?

2.  Get an external USB or Firewire CDRW. This would certainly be easier than opening up the case, but I do need a bootable drive. Are there any available that anyone can recommend?

Thank you in advance for your help in this time of difficulty.

Merry Christmas,

Andrew Gapstr.

[Greg Dunn]

I've taken apart my son's iMac a couple of times.  I'd say it's medium in the difficulty range.  Here's a link for iMac resources, one of the links from there shows how to do it picture by picture.  

http://w3.trib.com/~dwood/imac.shtml

The CD/DVD drive should be removable easily enough, but replacement might be tough, since it's a slot-loader.  That model might be hard to come by, tray-loaders are much more common.  If you have FireWire, then an external CD or DVD drive can boot up your Mac, I think.

[bobw]

Get the Pioneer DVR-106 or A06 and use it to replace your internal drive. This is the drive Apple uses and is compatible with all Apple apps and will boot your machine. You can get it for $130.00 or less with a little searching.

Chekc here for a service manual for some help;

http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/manuals.html

[swhitset]

I have no idea if you could make this work, but since the actual value of the old imac is pretty low at this point, this is what I would attempt.

Buy a Pioneer internal  DVD-RW DVR-104 (105 or 106... whatever you can get a good deal on).  

These are what Apple uses as Superdrives.  The problem (as Greg Dunn says above is that you have a slot loading iMac.

Opening the case is not really too difficult, but finding a way to modify it to accept a tray loading optical drive will take some skill.  I would probably use a Dremel and try to cut an opening to allow the tray to slide in and out (if there is room).  You would then have the problem of finishing the outside so it doesn't look to bad (if you care)  Maybe you could use the Bezel from a tray loading imac on the outside if you cut the opening just right....   I'm just speculating here.  I am crazy enough to try things like this, I don't balme you if you aren't.  

Steve

[Paddy]

Taking iMacs apart isn't what I'd describe as "fun", but as long as you follow the step-by-step procedure, you should be fine. They really pack the components in there - getting 'em all back in place requires patience! I've replaced a HD on ours, and added memory.

Replacement slot-loading drives can be had here:

MacPro.com - $77 for new Hitachi drive

Other World Computing - $89

TechnoWarehouse - $69 for Panasonic (same as Apple use)

I just did a google search for "replacement slot-loading CD + iMac" - and checked OWC as well, knowing they'd probably have 'em.

[kelly]

gapstr. If you think you're up to it, replace the Internal.

Probably from one of Paddy's links. Not that hard I think.

If not. Go with External Firewire. It will do fine.

Do you actually use the DVD or would a CDRW be ok?

Be sure to check here.

http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/sear...h.drivedb.lasso

[Paddy]

Steve, unless you know of someone who has actually managed to fit a larger (tray-loading) drive in an iMac, I wouldn't even begin to attempt it. It's not the exterior I'd be worried about - it's the actual amount of extra space on the interior, which if I recall correctly, is ZERO.  

Should you opt for a slot-loading DVD-RW, the price is a bit staggering...

Slot-loading DVD-RW - $449.00

Even the slot-loading CDRW's (relatively hard to find) aren't cheap:

Slot-loading CDRW/DVD - $2498X4X24 Apple CDRW - $179

If you want a CD-RW, you'd probably be better off getting an external FW drive. Not sure what OS you're using, but the Lite-On 52X32X52 works very nicely in OS 10.3.x and is available from BestBuy for $19.99 after rebates. Pop that into a Firewire case and you'd be all set. Or buy something already constructed - OWC has the same drive in a FW/USB 2.0 enclosure for $119.

Lite-On CDRW

[gapstr]

External Firewire sounds good to me. I just need to be sure that I can use it to boot from a startup CD if need be, preferably into both OS 9 and OS X. I don't really care about DVD capability, but a drive that can write to RW disks would be useful.

If anyone out there has such an External Firewire CDRW drive, would you please try an experiment for me: insert a system startup disk in it and select that drive as your startup drive. Then power off your Mac and restart it, and see if it will boot up from the CD. Powering off is important because some drives, such as my ZIP drive, will not boot up from a full cold start, but will allow a Mac to restart from it if it is selected as a startup disk and the Mac is restarted without powering off. I need to be sure that if I ever need to start up cold from a CD that I am not SOL. If you can (or can not) do this with your external Firewire drive, please reply here and let me know which drive you have.

Thank you,

A. G.

[Greg Dunn]

Using an ADS FireWire drive enclosure, and a Sony CD-RW drive that originally came with my Mac until I replaced it with a DVD-R drive, I started up my Mac with it as the startup drive as you asked.  It worked fine.

[mooregr]

Just below the chart on this page is a video on taking the iMac apart.

http://www.powerlogix.com/buynow/imac_service/


Here are some sources for a drive upgrade
http://www.mcetech.com/dvdrwimacsl.html
http://www.lowendmac.com/imacs/slot-up.html

Thanks
Guy

[gapstr]

Someone recently gave me a Pacific Digital X-treme 52, 52x24x52x external USB CD/RW drive. It works out of the box as a read-only drive, no additional drivers needed with OS 10.2.8. This is good, because without a CD drive I couldn't load any drivers anyway! It's not bootable, but it's better than nothing. It would be nice to be able to burn CDs with it, but when a blank CD is inserted a dialogue box comes up asking what I want to do with that disk, open with Finder, iTunes, or DiskCopy, each of which in turn tell me the drive is not suppurted by that application.  

The CDs that come with this drive have no Mac drivers and Pacific Digital's website does not seem to have anything suggesting any Mac support for this model exists. But it can read CDs, which means the Mac recognizes its existence, partly knows what to do with it, and can communicate with it. It isn't a piece of completely unrecognized hardware.  

So does anyone have any suggestions as to how I might be able to get the iMac to be able to use the writing capabilities of this drive?

Thank you,

Andrew Gapstr.

[kelly]

Hi Andrew.

Some people have had some luck making Pacific Digital Burners work.

Search here.

http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/sear...h.drivedb.lasso

One thing. I assume that's a USB 2.0 Enclosure.

Your machine makes USB 2.0 into USB 1.0

So even if you get it to work it will be at about 4x speed not 52x.

The most important thing is what actual Drive Mechanism is inside the Case.

What does Apple System Profiler say about it?

If you're very lucky it's a Lite-On brand.

[Paddy]

Kelly, if it was the Lite-On 52X24X52, he wouldn't be getting the messages about the drive being unsupported. That drive has been fully supported since 10.6 at least.

From XLR8yourmac (reader report - 10.2.6 on a B&W):

QUOTE

* The Pacific Digital is probably a BTC brand BCE 5224IM drive. I say this because the Pacific Digital website has a notice of a flash upgrade which points to the BTC website.
* To get native iTunes and DiscBurner support, I hacked the BTC BTC BCE1610IM plugin from your website, substituting "CDWRITER" for "BTC" (vendor) and "IDE5224" for "BCE1610IM". I can send you the actual plugin, if that helps.
* After hacking the plugin, ASP shows DiscBurner as "Fully Supported" and I can burn CDROMs at full speed from the Finder. Toast 5.2 also works like a charm at full speed, and iTunes is fully supported.

And here's the link to the hacked plug-in for Pacific Digital 52X24X52

I'm assuming that this plug-in works for 10.2.8 as well as 10.2.6. BTW - it may not work in Panther, should you decide to upgrade your OS at some point. Apparently Panther uses an entirely different method of recognizing drives etc.

And a further note - Toast should let you burn from just about any drive, so you might want to consider investing in that.

Let us know if any of this helps/works!

[kelly]

Yeah. I read that Paddy. Still. I don't assume anything.

If Andrew can get it to work a Firewire Enclosure is probably called for.

[RobW]

I recently had a few problems with my CD/DVD Drive on my iMac DV+(450). It doesn't happen all the time, but I have had some issues. I've been able to use my firewire burner (see my signature below) for any CDs I couldn't get to load with my internal drive. This includes running Disk Warrior as the startup disk one day to do some routine maintenance. Everything ran fine. I hadn't booted from a cold start. If you still need me to, I'll try that later this evening.

I am wondering if this is the beginning of the end for the internal drive. Jeez, the computer's not that old!