Apple DVD Burning

May 9, 2005 3:01 PM

I want burn DVD's, but I want to do it on my Mac and PC. I had an external enclosure, so I could move the drive between PC and mac easily. The proble is it wouldn't let me use my Optorite DVD drive to write DVD's on my Mac, only to read them. Where can I find a list of the DVD writers that OS X supports natively?

I put the Optorite DVD burner into a generic enclosure (looked exactly like this one) that had a "Prolific PL3507 Combo Device"
USB2/Firewire chipset in. The Apple System Profiler told me that disc burning was not suppoted with this device. It could have been the external enclosure, or the drive, but it wasn't going to let me burn a DVD, on my Powerbook, or my housemate's Mac Mini.

I know I can get the Lacie DVD Burner and use that but I believe that I can get an enclosure and DVD burner for less. I just need to know that the drive is supported under OS X before I part with more money. I haven't been able to find a list on the Apple support forums, on via google and I took the external enclosure back to the shop.

posted by gaby to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: Pioneer DVR-107, 108 and 109 are recognized as Superdrives and are OS-bootable. That means you can boot a Mac from them, and you can run iDVD and such with them natively.

Other native drives include LG HL-DT-ST drives, such as a GWA-4082B.

I haven't seen any official list of "Superdrive"-esque drives. But the above gives you some options. You can start at Newegg for OEM parts, among other vendors. (Disclaimer: I don't work for Newegg.)

I've successfully flashed Pioneer drives and they continue to be recognized as Superdrives with the benefits of the flashed firmware. Your mileage may vary, however.
posted by AlexReynolds at 3:07 PM on May 9, 2005

Best answer: It doesn't matter what Apple supports natively, if all you want to do is burn things.
posted by majick at 3:18 PM on May 9, 2005

Strictly speaking not true if you plan to use Apple apps — not all drives are supported within iTunes, for example. But if you want to do all your burning from within Roxio Toast, then majick is correct.
posted by AlexReynolds at 3:26 PM on May 9, 2005

I like Toast, although it's a bit buggy, but the free version of DiscBlaze works just as well.

In any case, what Alex says is pretty much untrue, although perhaps it was at one time (I don't know a lot of the last few years of Mac history having only started using them within the last year or so):

Q: Will PatchBurn help me to use CD/DVD writers with iTunes?
A: Yes, this exactly is the main purpose of PatchBurn.

Q: Will PatchBurn help me to use CD/DVD writers with iDVD?
A: Yes, with some restrictions: You need to have a G4 processor or newer.

Looks to me like as long as you don't need a firmware-bootable device, all you need to do is run Patchburn and you're all set regardless of which applications you use.
posted by majick at 3:38 PM on May 9, 2005

Majick is correct; mea culpa.
posted by AlexReynolds at 5:02 PM on May 9, 2005

Response by poster: Patchburn looks like the silver bullet I'm after :) All the machines have internal DVD readers so booting is not a problem. Thank you majick.

I'll also probably change my Optorite drive for a Dual Layer Pioneer one soon too, so thanks also to Alex!
posted by gaby at 5:49 PM on May 9, 2005