For about the last month, my 2007 Intel Mac Mini has refused to read a single disc thrown at it. Blank media, factory-pressed discs, start-up discs - you name it, it hates it. It just spins around for a minute or so and then spits it out. The drive's a Matshita UJ-846.

I've tried everything (every reset you can name, etc.) and nothing's made any difference. I'm resigned to the fact that the drive is just dead and now looking at getting an external burner.

Can you guys give some good recommendations as to what's a good external burner to look out for? I've never had to buy one before, so I'm a little clueless (I'd prefer something I can plug in straight out of the box rather than constructing anything). Any links to where I might be able to buy any of the burners you recommend online would likewise be ace.

Thanks!

There's a bunch of generic USB external burners on ebay from Hong Kong, do a search for exactly that. I just bought one, getting it shipped to me for about $75. (ymmv due to the dollar). I tried one that belonged to a friend and it worked fine with my Macbook.

How about buying a Pioneer DVR-K06 and a putty knife?

I bought an LG Super Multi drive ($50 at Domayne - firewire version) and it is excellent. It is a bit big but will owrk with all types of media, including RAM. It is double layer as well.

So, pretty much ANY decent external burner will do the job?...

Is there much difference in getting one with USB or Firewire? A lot I find on eBay only seem to have USB.

Hmm, something like this then?

External Dual Layer DVD CD R/RW Drives Burner Writer - eBay Other Drives, Drives, Laptop Parts, Computers. (end time 24-Nov-08 06:30:43 AEDST)

That's a bugger. I assume you don't have any of your 12 months warranty left either? Didn't get AppleCare?

The slot-load drives Apple have been using the last few years in their laptops, Minis and iMacs are ... well, 'scuse the french, but they're disposable pieces of shit, prone to mechanical seizures, laser diode burn-outs and, if it lasts long enough to avoid those two problems, dies from the plastic laser lenses fogging up after too many high speed burns.

Heh, I admire the honesty. Seriously, though, if you can wield a screwdriver without puncturing your leg and press two Lego bricks together and not have them fall apart, then you can 'build' an external by putting a cheap, full-sized tray loading optical drive into an external drive enclosure.

Yes, although the trick is finding something that qualifies as "decent"

FireWire is FAR superior to USB for just about everything; your Mini considers the FireWire ports just as important as the internal SATA and IDE connectors. This means that you can easily boot from a FireWire device (not so easy via USB), which means if you ever want to re-install OSX from DVD at any stage, the optical drive will need to be bootable, and that means FireWire.

Ah, gotcha. So, I'll definitely be after one I can connect via Firewire then as I'm going to be using this external drive exclusively for the Mini now - and that could potentially include a reinstall at some point.

Is it substantially cheaper to put together an enclosure thingo with an internal drive? If it's not too difficult, then I might consider it...

yep, that's almost exactly what I bought. I'll probably post a thread about it when it arrives, but as I mentioned a friend has the same one and it worked fine on my Macbook (though sometimes you have to unplug/replug in the USB cable to get the Macbook to recognise it... but once it's recognised it works fine). I did a test burn and it worked beautifully.

Good. If you can, find a drive (or drive enclosure) that has both FireWire and USB, this will give the peripheral a longer useful life and let it be used on prety much anything in the future.

The best one for your money is this one - the Welland ME-340U2FL, at A$64 from i-Tech.



Nice looking enclosure, easy to open and install the drive into (two plugs, four screws) and easy to re-assemble. It sports both USB 2.0 and FireWire connectors, and most importantly the FireWire side of things is controlled by an Oxford chip, the one that Mac OS X works best with. No drivers needed, either.

Into that, you can install pretty much any optical drive you like -- Pioneer, LiteOn and LG DVD+-RW burners can be bought from any corner PC shop for about A$30. When you're looking at the burners themselves, make sure you get one that uses IIDE (some places call it PATA) and not a SATA drive. Prices for IDE and SATA drives from the same maker are usually identical, so you have to double-check you're getting the right one.

If you want to do a one-shop-stop, then the most suitable drive that i-Tech sells is this one -- an LG IDE-based GH22NP20 standard burner (reads and writes everything) for A$38.



Possibly the best thing about building your own this way is that if the burner mechanism dies, it's only another $30-ish and ten minutes of your time to replace it. Full height drives like the LG will last a lot longer than the slimline ones, and cost substantially less. It definitely beats paying A$120 to A$300 for someone to replace the slimline drive!

Brains - you're a deadset legend.

That info is a godsend, I'll look into it right away. Seems as if this is definitely the best way to go.

I recently replaced the optical drive in an intel mini... and it was easy. Picked one up second hand for about $70 (superdrive), popped open the case... removed 6 screws, and it worked perfectly.

I definately would consider this as opposed to an external. And unless you can find an awesome looking enclosure... it just looks better.

I'm not really too fussed about how it looks, to be honest. I'm probably going to pick up exactly what Brains linked to in his post above - I think it's going to be the cheapest and easiest solution.

If I replace the internal drive, it'll be another slim-line slot loading device and I'm (understandably!) now a little wary of how reliable they are, to be honest.

Thanks for all of your help with this, I'll let you know how it all went.

SMB does have a point, it is worth considering getting the internal drive replaced at some point down the track, to increase the Mini's resale value at the very least. There are instructions and videos on how to 'crack' a Mini case without breaking anything, and whilst the parts inside can be much more fiddly because they are smaller, getting good instructions, double-checking every step, and taking your time will let even the clumsiest home technician do the change-over.

The only caveat with replacing an Apple internal drive -- especially slotload slimline ones -- is that you can't buy just any drive from a PC-parts retailer, the drive has to be properly configured for Macs. "Why is it so, I hear you ask?" Apple's hardware (specifically the firmware that lets you boot the machine) expects the optical drive's device-jumper to be set to Master; normally, the drive-maker ships their drives from the factory with the device-jumper set to Cable Select. On big drives (normal-sized optical drives, hard drives), this jumper is easily moved from one pair of pins to another, but on slimline drives, the jumper is a teensy-tinsy resistor soldered into place, so unless you have a steady hand and a soldering-station that lets you work with SMDs, it is not a user-changeable option.

I use a ASUS 16x burner (rebadged Pioneer) with my mini-the drive and case cost about $60 all up.