New MacBook and no DVD writer?

AlanD

I bought a new MacBook shortly before Christmas and it's running Leopard.

My understanding was that the included super drive was also a dvd writer. Is this not the case? I just opened iDVD to create a DVD and it said my DVD drive was not compatible!! I'm not impressed.

Right, so if the drive isn't a writer of DVD's, I have a pretty good Samsung internal writer with lightscribe that I had fitted to my old PC. Can I put this in to a housing box and use it with my MacBook in some way?

Or, what's the alternative?

Thanks.

BanzaiBk

Not trying to be a smartass but are you sure it has a superdrive? The base model Macbook only has a combo drive.

AlanD

you could be right....I don't know. I'm a mac noob, so how would I find out.

I thought they all came with superdrives....or, I thought all drives were superdrives.

jpfahy

Click on the black apple icon top left of your screen and select 'about this mac'
Click 'more info'
click 'disc burning' and it will tell you whether you have a superdive capable of dvd burning or a combo drive capable of dvd reading only

PeakOutput

which macbook did you get?

if its the cheapest one then afaik there is no superdrive

DadaKopf

Are you trying to write to a dual-layer DVD? If so, you won't be able to. Might be the problem, unless you can just read DVDs.

AlanD

oooooo......

MAT****A CD-RW CW-8221:

Firmware Revision: GA0K
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw
Media: Insert media and refresh to show available burn speeds


Ok, so that is something I missed completely when buying a MacBook. Damn.

Right, what are my solutions? I have a load of home movies I want to put on to DVD. As I said about, I have an internal dvd drive for a PC. Can it be transformed in any way?

Thanks...

AlanD

PeakOutput wrote: »

which macbook did you get?

if its the cheapest one then afaik there is no superdrive

Yeah got the 13" 2.0 GHz 80 gig HDD bog basic version. It's my own mistake for not realising it didn't come with a DVD writer, I had just assumed it did.

AlanD

bedlam wrote: »

You could pick up a USB to IDE/SATA cable, this would let you hook it up to your Mac

oh I like this idea!

ZENER

Maplin sell these.

ZEN

AlanD

saw one today in Maplin for 40 euro. Cheaper than buying an external drive really. I hardly need an enclosure for it really, do I?

ian.k

Luckily i figured that out before buying my macbook a few days ago. But c'mon apple combo drives still? Anyway the 2.2ghz suited me better. There actually is quite a noticeable difference and besides 80gb isn't enough nowadays. Btw you have 14 days to return if your not happy. You can simply pay more for a better model well, thats what Apple support told me that when i rang about a dvd burning problem but it might just be for the states. Good luck with it anyway

AlanD

The cable to use my internal drive from the PC will do the trick I think. It's seldom enough that I need to burn DVD's anyway, so I don't mind so much.

The 80 gig drive is very tiny though! But I got over that with a 500 gig external.