el capitan kills connection to apple external dvd

[tonythenose]

Just want Everyone to know, I replaced my internal optical dvd drive with an SSD in my 2011 macbook pro. Put the internal optical drive into an external case. It worked fine until I upgraded from Yosemite to el capitan. Just came from the genius bar where I was informed that el capitan installed (?) firmware that cannot be uninstalled and it pretty much kills any connection to an apple external optical drive. My macbook pro will no longer play dvds from my once internal/now external apple drive. The mac now will not allow any apple external drive to work. (error -70012) VLC will not work either. And you can't override anything in the system to change its search for internal dvd drive to external -- No matter what!
Nice, Apple. Thanks for the lack of any warning. Now I have to buy a new third party drive to access my dvds. It's not like Apple benefits from this. Buying another Apple drive to solve the problem won't work. I tried to use my daughter's oem external apple drive an no dice.
If you are on Yosemite or lower and have an external apple dvd drive -- DON'T UPGRADE TO EL CAPITAN or your external drive will no longer work.

 

[chas_m]

Why not report that as a bug so that they can have the engineers develop a fix (though admittedly the number of people who would find themselves in your exact situation is quite small). I think what the Apple geniuses were saying is that the firmware for an Apple internal drive depends on it being actually in the machine, and won't work with an external case (though any external DVD drive should work fine). That's a bit odd, but of course they could not anticipate that people would (like you and I both did) remove the internal DVD drive for more SSD/HD storage, so I can see where the flaw came from.

 

[tonythenose]

Thanks Chas_m for your comment. But wouldn't a visit to the genius bar (2x) and their assessment suffice to report the bug? Oh, I suppose not. I don't have the slightest idea how to report the bug, but by the time they institute a fix, I will have already been forced to buy a new drive. I need this now and can't wait for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn.
Still, it's nice to know I'm not alone here. So until Apple figures this out (and maybe decides it's worth fixing), a heads up to anyone else before upgrading.

 

[chas_m]

Yes, thanks for letting us know. Sorry that happened -- at least the external DVD burner should cost very much (under $50 if you shop around).

 

[IWT]

I can confirm that if an external DVD drive worked in, say, Mavericks, it will still work fine in El Capitan.

Ian


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[tonythenose]

I can confirm that if an external DVD drive worked in, say, Mavericks, it will still work fine in El Capitan.

Ian


Sent from my iPad using Mac Forums

Not on my machine. If the computer originally had an internal dvd drive it won't work with an external apple drive. According to genius, the external apple drives only work with an imac or macbook air or mac that never had an internal drive.

 

[RadDave]

I can confirm that if an external DVD drive worked in, say, Mavericks, it will still work fine in El Capitan.

Well, I would agree w/ Ian - my MBPro is on El Capitan (10.11.2) and I've owned an external Apple SuperDrive for nearly 3 years which worked fine on the laptop w/ previous operating systems - just attached the USB optical drive and started a commercial DVD movie w/o a problem - now, I have not tried to 'burn' any CD-Rs (my main reason for using the device). Dave

 

[tonythenose]

Well, I would agree w/ Ian - my MBPro is on El Capitan (10.11.2) and I've owned an external Apple SuperDrive for nearly 3 years which worked fine on the laptop w/ previous operating systems - just attached the USB optical drive and started a commercial DVD movie w/o a problem - now, I have not tried to 'burn' any CD-Rs (my main reason for using the device). Dave

RadDave, So did your laptop ever have an internal dvd drive or did it come without and you've always used the external? Apple says the issue comes from having an original internal dvd drive and then trying to use an external. The laptop will only recognize an internal if that's the way it came. If your laptop originally came with an internal dvd drive and you removed it (which is what I did) and your external apple drive works then something else is going on here.

 

[MacInWin]

I will agree with tonythenose to a certain extent. My MBP had an internal DVD which I replaced with an SSD. Now iDVD won't find the same drive in an external enclosure to play DVDs. I can play DVDs in VLC, so the system CAN read the drive, but iDVD won't play. At one time there was a hex edit to a file that would enable the use of an external drive in a system that had had an internal, but I don't remember where it was. Each update to the OS overwrote the file, so it needed to be re-edited each time. I haven't tried it in ElCap so I don't know if SIP will block the hack or not. I'll do some research to see if I can find the hex edit. It was simple, too, there are four instances where the word "internal" needed to be changed to "external" and iDVD worked just fine.

As I recall, the change was made in Mavericks.

EDIT: Wow, that didn't take much to find: http://www.cnet.com/news/addressing-dvd-player-error-70012-when-using-external-drives-in-os-x/

UPDATE: Sadly, SIP seems to be blocking the hack. I can copy the framework to the desktop, edit the file as needed, but even using CLI and sudo, I can't copy the edited file back to the original location. I won't disable SIP, but for the OP, if this is more important than security, then disabling SIP may allow you to put the file back into the library after editing it.

UPDATE #2. I forgot to mention that VLC plays DVDs from the eternal just fine. Haven't tried to get it to full screen, but he dvd did load and play.

 

[tonythenose]

RadDave, So did your laptop ever have an internal dvd drive or did it come without and you've always used the external? Apple says the issue comes from having an original internal dvd drive and then trying to use an external. The laptop will only recognize an internal if that's the way it came. If your laptop originally came with an internal dvd drive and you removed it (which is what I did) and your external apple drive works then something else is going on here.

Sorry, I meant The laptop will only recognize an external if that's the way it came (without an internal).

 

[dtravis7]

I 100% agree with Jake and had it happen here even way back. The URL Jake provided at least was a fix that worked at one time.

 

[RadDave]

RadDave, So did your laptop ever have an internal dvd drive or did it come without and you've always used the external? Apple says the issue comes from having an original internal dvd drive and then trying to use an external. The laptop will only recognize an internal if that's the way it came. If your laptop originally came with an internal dvd drive and you removed it (which is what I did) and your external apple drive works then something else is going on here.

Hi Tony..... - my MBPro is early 2013 and did not come w/ an internal optical drive, so I cannot really comment on your issue - I see others have responded, so let me take a read of the newer posts. Good luck - Dave

 

[tonythenose]

Hi Tony..... - my MBPro is early 2013 and did not come w/ an internal optical drive, so I cannot really comment on your issue - I see others have responded, so let me take a read of the newer posts. Good luck - Dave

UPDATE: Well I reset the SMC on my laptop and now I got VLC to play a dvd. :Blushing: I've sent Apple a bug report and we'll see if they do anything, but at least I don't have to buy a new dvd player! But I don't think I can burn dvds so I still have to figure that out.
Thanks to everyone for their kind comments and input.

 

[pm-r]

UPDATE: Well I reset the SMC on my laptop and now I got VLC to play a dvd. :Blushing: I've sent Apple a bug report and we'll see if they do anything, but at least I don't have to buy a new dvd player! But I don't think I can burn dvds so I still have to figure that out.
Thanks to everyone for their kind comments and input.

That seems like a strange fix for the problem, but I'm glad to read that it worked, even though I shouldn't need it.

 

[tonythenose]

That seems like a strange fix for the problem, but I'm glad to read that it worked, even though I shouldn't need it.

Okay, I take it back. It played a burned dvd but wouldn't play a commercial studio movie. Very frustrating. I guess I'll go buy a third party dvd drive.

 

[harryb2448]

Not Apple's problem. The machine was designed, and built, to have an installed optical drive. Removing it created a hack.

 

[tonythenose]

Not Apple's problem. The machine was designed, and built, to have an installed optical drive. Removing it created a hack.

Maybe, but where's the logic? It's not like nobody installs an SSD in their macbooks. Apple intentionally blocks you from using their own product and forces you to a 3rd party? Makes no sense from a business standpoint. Someone decided to change the permissions. Because in the past you could change the DVD Playback file but now it won't allow a change -- so someone decided to disallow that.

 

[chas_m]

Maybe, but where's the logic? It's not like nobody installs an SSD in their macbooks.

People do that all the time, but they do it to replace the main hard drive. Apple did not anticipate or design for the possibility that someone would remove the built-in OPTICAL DRIVE and try to replace it with storage. They didn't design the optical drive to work independently from the machine it was custom-built for. This isn't rocket science.

 

[harryb2448]

As chas m says replacing the internal hard drive now SSDs come in quite large capacities is extremely common. You can install whichever brand of SSD takes your fancy, subjecting to it being the correct size.

And some models have a 6Gb/ps SATA III hard drive connector, and a 3Gb/ps SATA II optical drive connector. This means of course with a SATA III drive in the optical drive it is hog tied to the slower speed. And that includes the 2011 model MBP.

 

[MacInWin]

They didn't design the optical drive to work independently from the machine it was custom-built for. This isn't rocket science.

The internal optical does work well in an external enclosure. I'm doing that here. The problem is that in some configuration somewhere, Apple has encoded that this machine came with an internal DVD, so iDVD doesn't see ANY external or internal drive at all without the hack. I'm not going to go all paranoid and say that's deliberate, but it's stupid. Of course Apple has zero motivation to do anything, but there you go. In the case where you don't hack the hardware but the internal optical fails, you cannot just get an external and be on your way. That's a dumb design.

Apple intentionally blocks you from using their own product and forces you to a 3rd party?

@tonythenose, I don't think Apple is intentionally blocking you from using the product, it's just that when they implemented SIP to protect the system files from malevolent changes, they also blocked us from being able to make benign changes. SIP is, IMHO, a good thing, and I can live without iDVD, but it is frustrating that I would have to degrade security to watch a DVD. I *could* just keep the edited framework somewhere and write an Applescript to move it to the directory and another to undo that and when I want to watch a video, disable SIP, execute the script, watch the video, execute the second script and re-enable SIP, but frankly I'm too lazy to do all that. Might even be able to get the SIP changes in a script too, so it would be just two scripts to run and iDVD would work. Hmmmmmmmm, might try that on a day I'm bored and have nothing else to do.