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Does anyone use their optical drive anymore?

VirtualRain

VirtualRain

macrumors 603
Original poster
Aug 1, 2008
6,304
118
Vancouver, BC
I may rip mine out in favor of another HD... And I'm having a tough time thinking of anything that might make me regret it :eek:

I'm on Lion so even an OS reinstall won't use it and all my software is downloaded (eg. Mac App Store). :confused:
 
I did it. Still looking for a 5.25" external enclosure for the DVD burner, but there are cheap USB slim burners available too.

I do have a slight problem though in that in the optical bay I have an SSD and a HDD. Unfortunately the HDD spinning is creating vibrations in the aluminum case that causes the whole Mac Pro case to make a loud buzzing noise several times a day. I have to look into finding rubber stoppers or something as such to reduce the vibrations.
 
The only times I have used my optical was to add some physical CDs to iTunes recently. Apart from that, I have not used it since the original Snow Leopard instal.
 
Macman45 said:
Yes, on my iMac for buying projects....The portable on my MBA for transfer of large files, But the Optical drive I use most often is the one built into my recording board.
Click to expand...

i burn all fished projects to cd, dvd and blu ray. I keep the discs in a metal filing cabinet. In 15 years i have never lost a file
 
Yes, yesterday. To repair a hard disk on the iMac of my wife. Wouldn't run and had to be booted from disk. Happy to report that it works fine again after repairing the disk.
 
I used both optical drives yesterday to burn 5 DVDs and 5 Blu-Ray discs for a client.

Last week, I ripped several CDs into my music library.
 
I use it all the time. Audio CD imports to iTunes, data backups, delivery of project files to clients, and software installations (and re-installations) are all pretty common for me.

I dread the day when I'm forced to an external, as that's just a pain (and cable creep) compared to the way it works now. Even on my wife's laptop, she uses the optical drive pretty frequently.

If people just don't want an optical drive on their machines, then I guess I wouldn't mind if future Mac Pros made it an includable option (rather than a default).
 
VirtualRain said:
I may rip mine out in favor of another HD... And I'm having a tough time thinking of anything that might make me regret it :eek:

I'm on Lion so even an OS reinstall won't use it and all my software is downloaded (eg. Mac App Store). :confused:
Click to expand...
You either need an optical/Blu-Ray drive, or... you don't. If you need one, you can always plug in an external drive for those occasions. On my personal Mac Pro it got pulled out a long time ago to make way for dual SSDs in RAID0 for boot. I haven't ever missed it.
 
d-m-a-x said:
i burn all fished projects to cd, dvd and blu ray. I keep the discs in a metal filing cabinet. In 15 years i have never lost a file
Click to expand...

I wouldn't count on that. Many of my older burned discs are going bad. I ended up copying all old archived optical discs to a new hard drive. To my horror, many of the discs had at least one bad file. A few discs were mostly bad files.

There was no pattern to the brand of failed media. At least 6 different burners were used, and discs that were meant for archive were always tested when finished burning. I have very low trust of burned optical media for archival storage.

Remember, burned optical media is very different than pressed optical media. Burned optical media uses an organic ink layer. I can see that breaking down over time. Pressed optical media uses a thin sheet of metal pressed with indentations. I can see that lasting a long time.
 
Macman45 said:
Remember though....Optical disks have a shelf life. This I learned a while back. I backup to an external source as well....Just in case.
Click to expand...

They do. Keeping them in a cool, dark place is important, also multiple copies and re-burning. I've had better luck doing it this way then storing it on hd's.

I burn two copies of the finished product and one copy of raw files. I have a lot of discs, but since all the eggs are not in one basket, it is hard for it to go wrong
 
Last edited:
For installing things. But I wouldn't mind Apple dumping it off my Macbook Pro.
 
I pulled mine out to make room for another SSD and have a usb one for the very rare need. I would prefer not to even need one for that. Clunky, slow, obsolete technology imo.
 
Burnt a few DVD's just yesterday, export my iTunes collection monthly to disc as a safe keep just in case my NAS backup decides to bite the dust.
 
VirtualRain said:
I'm on Lion so even an OS reinstall won't use it and all my software is downloaded (eg. Mac App Store). :confused:
Click to expand...

LOL, except for everyone who does a clean install on a blank hdd.
:D

External optical drive/usb drive to the rescue! There was talk of firmware having ability to do a an internet install. I wonder if it's live, proposed or simply idle talk.
 
QuantumLo0p said:
There was talk of firmware having ability to do a an internet install. I wonder if it's live, proposed or simply idle talk.
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The latest MacBook Airs come without optical media and or USB stick for system recovery. Instead there is a small partition on the internal SSD that can boot into a kind of recovery manager which then downloads the actual OS install data from Internet.

So I would consider this feature indeed being live, even though not all Mac models may have it yet...
 
Neodym said:
The latest MacBook Airs come without optical media and or USB stick for system recovery. Instead there is a small partition on the internal SSD that can boot into a kind of recovery manager which then downloads the actual OS install data from Internet.

So I would consider this feature indeed being live, even though not all Mac models may have it yet...
Click to expand...

In addition, I believe the Macbook Airs actually have a mode built into the firmware (not the drive) where they can reinstall from the internet.
 
goMac said:
In addition, I believe the Macbook Airs actually have a mode built into the firmware (not the drive) where they can reinstall from the internet.
Click to expand...
My understanding is that this firmware mode is actually using that hidden SSD partition.
 
Neodym said:
My understanding is that this firmware mode is actually using that hidden SSD partition.
Click to expand...

It's not. It'll actually download the partition again for you if it's missing. It's basically for if your entire disk gets hosed.
 
I burn blu-rays. They're cheaper than $1/disc, and actually pretty handy. I do think blu-ray is the last generation of optical media, but some of us have a use for it.

Easy to forget sometimes that some segments rely on them...and that lots of people can't even get a decent connection with which to stream HD video.
 
I'm done with them. All my music CDs have been ripped for years, and everything I *really* need is on something more robust. The hundreds of old burned CD/DVD "archives" I was keeping are actually expendable at this point.

My next computer will definitely be an Air but I think it's clear Apple is going to be ahead of the curve when it comes to ditching optical media altogether.
 
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