Will an external Superdrive work with my iMac?

[Sawday]

My 2011 iMac no longer recognises DVD's in its internal Superdrive, despite various 'fixes' (blowing compressed air in and using suggested Terminal commands). I thought I'd buy an external Superdrive (cheap on auction site) but wondered if the problem is the OS rather than something physical with my drive. I'm on MacOS 10.13.6, the latest my iMac will take.

 

[IWT]

Any Ext Super Drive will work provided it isn't Apple's Super Drive.

Ian

 

[Sawday]

Any Ext Super Drive will work provided it isn't Apple's Super Drive.

Ian

Any particular reason?

 

[djdawson]

My USB Superdrive box has a sticker on it that says "Compatible with Mac systems without a built-in optical drive." It also complains about inadequate power and does not work if I plug it into an external USB hub (a nice Anker USB 3.0 hub with a special higher-powered port for fast charging) and requires that I plug it into one of the built-in ports on my Late 2014 iMac. I don't use it much, but it works fine when I do, but there's nothing special about it. It's also a slot-loading drive so you can't use small CD's with it. There should be plenty of generic optical drives available pretty cheaply that would definitely work, since it's possible the Apple Superdrive won't work with your iMac because of the power issue.

 

[pm-r]

Any particular reason?

I would guess that only Apple could answer that question and I would further suggest that they probably never will even bother trying.

But why bother, there are lots of other brands that are often better and also cheaper that just work.



- Patrick
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[exncite]

I went through the same issue with my new iMac. The Apple Superdrive I had used with my 2015 iMac would not work. Apple says it is incompatible. Bought a decent one from OSW and it works just fine.

Edit: Sorry. OWC. I got the Mercury Pro.

 

[IWT]

Any particular reason?

Can't give you one except that has always been the case.

As others have confirmed.

Ian

 

[Sawday]

Thanks all. I've seen a few on eBay for around £20 which looed a bargain but I had also seen that they wer enot compatible with macs with an internal drive and had, obviously wrongly, assumed that was an error. Live and learn.