Has anyone connected a non-Superdrive external CD/DVD drive to the MBA?

[pgharavi]

Hi,

I was hoping to use my friend's external CD/DVD drive instead of having to purchase the $99 Superdrive. It has two plugs on the back, one for power, which oddly enough is a USB cable, and then the typical Male to Female USB cable. I'm assuming you need both but I'm not sure. Either way I'm not having any luck getting it to show up on the MBA.

Since it came from a Lenovo, I tried hooking it up to another friend's Vaio. Still no luck. I'm sure it works on the Lenovo, but I'm kinda stuck. I'm wondering if there is any point in trying to troubleshoot if the only thing that will work is the Superdrive in the first place.

Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

I doubt you could get it to work without hardware mods.

 

[pgharavi]

I doubt you could get it to work without hardware mods.

Really?? So the ONLY option to connect an optical drive to the MBA is the Superdrive?

 

[Phil A.]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

I doubt you could get it to work without hardware mods.

why do you say that? I would expect any USB device to work fine. I think the op would definitely need power to the external drive to make it work

 

[robby818]

Sounds like OP's external drive was the one made for some X series thinkpads (40?)....andrequires two USB ports (standard voltage i think). So, if you plugged both ends into a powered USB hub and the hub to the MBA, the drive should power on....and can't the MBA use any normal (one that has an external power source and a USB port) external USB CD/DVD drive?

 

[zand]

I just used a Pioneer Superdrive in an external drive case via USB 2.0 so I can confirm non-Apple Superdrive's will work.

 

[mag2001]

Anyone else using an external instead of a superdirve?

 

[chp5592]

No problems with external DVD rom drive (old) connected via ata-USB connector from old external hard drive. Used to clean install OS X and office without problems. Shows up as external CD/DVD drive

 

[Retops]

Sony external dvd writer works great

No problems with external DVD rom drive (old) connected via ata-USB connector from old external hard drive. Used to clean install OS X and office without problems. Shows up as external CD/DVD drive

I had an older Sony DVD writer that I used to load software on my MBA. It worked great and the MBA recognized it as soon as I plugged it in.

I am really happy with the new machine.

 

[bitty417]

Just stuck a CD-ROM drive in a 5.25 enclosure I had lying around. Worked like a charm. Enclosure has it's own power brick.

 

[ccclapp]

ditto

others work

NOTE: The Mac Superdrive does not work on a usb hub. This you MUCT devote the single USB slot to it..BAD Design

 

[MRU]

I have connected the 360's HD-DVD drive to the MBA

It works for playing back DVD's and it recognizes HD-DVD's but of course there is no player for them yet.

You could definitely use the drive if you wanted to import CD's, rip DVD's and such without springing for the superdrive (of course you won't be able to burn though).