External dvd drive is a great solution if you own a netbook or your pc has a broken builtin dvd drive. We think it offers creatives the perfect balance of speed, reliability, portability and price for both mac and pc users. How to boot a mac from an external drive or alternate. External hard drives, thumb drives, usb drives, flash memory cards, and devices like ipod are examples of storage devices that you can connect to your mac using thunderbolt, usb, or firewire cables, or connect wirelessly using bluetooth. You can tuck it away anywhere that makes the most sense for you. On my macbook pro inch retina 2012 under mojave fyi which runs awesomely smoothly. It connects to your macbook pro with retina display, macbook air, imac or mac mini with a single usb typea cable thats built into the superdrive. Apple claims that its usb superdrive has everything you need in an optical drive. Usually, when you want to connect an external hard drive to your computer, you just plug it in and thats it. When youre planning to use your seagate drive only for your mac. The best solution, especially for those using a portable mac, is an external hard drive. How to burn a cd, dvd or bluray disc on a mac macworld uk.
Remote disc sharing may not be perfect, but sharing a disc over the network has the same limitations on windows. Connect the firewire, thunderbolt, or usb cable betwixt the drive and your computer. Pick your favorite way to eject disk volumes from your mac and put an end to the disk not ejected properly warnings. Find the best external dvd drives for macs based on what customers said. Shop a wide variety of models including external hard drives from brands such as western digital, samsung, toshiba, seagate and transcend, in a wide variety of memory sizes to suit your datastorage needs. Would you like an external hard drive where both your mac and your pc can interchange files or listen to the same mp3s. Macbook pro with retina display, macbook air, imac late 2012 and later, mac. The easiest would be installing linux to a secondary drive or virtual machine. Apple may have ditched physical media, but if you have discs you want to watch, play, or rip, then these external dvd and bluray player and. Right now, our top pick for best external hard drive is the western digital my passport 4tb, which is a mechanical hard drive. Five ways to eject a stuck cd or dvd from the optical. And copying data from a cd disc will take 5 minutes. If you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between mac and pc is an often difficult but it doesnt need to be.
Best external hard drives and ssds for mac and pc image credit. Compare the different options for formatting an external hard drive to work with windows and mac. External cd, dvd and bluray drives currys pc world. Preprogrammed for both mac and windows, you shouldnt need to do any formatting to get the drive to work. How to scan a drive for errors on your mac dummies. Macs like most other computers are well working hardware which includes all the newest technologies, unfortunately sometimes hardware and software miscommunicate and causes issues in proper work. With no eject button on the device and powered by usb the visiontech external cddvd drive is very slim and compact. They were all marked for windows only and they all worked flawlessly with my macs, including lightscribe features for the drives that supported it. If youve got a pc or laptop, its worth connecting and seeing if you can access the.
Macs and pcs that are in use for various jobs and youd like a central external hard drive to share and pop files onto. However, an external hard disk drive is accessible when you have it with you, no internet connection required. The best external hard drives for mac in 2020 pcmag. Shop for external portable cd drive online at target. Pretty much any usb dvdcd drive will work with your mac. If you go with linux installation, dual boot your mac with linux on another drive and use fat32 as a transfer intermediary. Learn about the different disk formats that you can use on your mac and how to format or erase your external drive using disk utility. I put a dvd in it, it all worked perfectly normal, once finishing the dvd i shut down the computer like i would normal but i forgot to eject the disk. Create a bootable lion install drive for newer macs macworld. This is specifically true of macs which often run slower internal drives. Use external storage devices with mac apple support.
Cannot mount external hard drive on mac, how to fix. Good product and recommendi have a mac book pro without dvd, this dvd drive with usb c connection give me a easy connect dvd drive without any tr. With an external dvd drive, you can always read, copy, or write burn an optical disc. However, if you are using a macbook pro or any mac computer, the hard drive. Amazon prime day is the perfect day to pick up an external cd or dvd drive for your mac. How to boot a mac from an external drive or alternate startup disk. To expand the storage capacity of your mac, you can connect one or more external drives, including solidstate or traditional movingplatter mechanisms as well as flashmemorybased thumb drives. This is what people described as external hard disk detected but not showing in. With simplicity, this external drive has stateoftheart technology. Compare portable, usb and external hard drive models for office and home and shop online. With thunderbolt, usb or firewire, you can install an external hard drive without opening your imacs case. If you have already written any data to the drive, back it up before proceeding to the next step.
An external dvd drive easily connects to any computer with a usb 2. Its portable design is great for mobile workstation. You can connect this superdrive with your macbook pro with retina display, macbook air, imac, or mac mini with a single usb type a cable, which is built into this superdrive. There are a few reasons to reformat your drive this way. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. This situation often occurs after you initially eject the external drive and unplug it from your computer. There are two ways to access such external drives on your mac via linux os or fuse system. I have a mac osx snow leopard install disc dvd, and an external hard drive actually an ssd. Back up your important files, photos, films and music with an external hard drive from the. How to access an external drive thats not recognized on a mac. I have a macbook air which doesnt have a disk drive built in so i bought an external one.
The 8 best external hard drives and ssds for mac and pc. Looking to add storage, or for a smart way to back up your mac. Regardless of the physical size, capacity and medium your external drive. For smooth, hasslefree, fast, and secure transmission of your data, external cddvd drive is the best solution for your mac. Find low everyday prices and buy online for delivery or instore pickup. With your imac turned on and the external drive disconnected from the ac outlet, follow these steps. If you want a reliable external hard drive that has a decent amount of storage, is super easy to carry around and has a very affordable price tag, the seagate backup plus slim is the best option for most people. Shop for external cd dvd drive for mac at best buy. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and mac.
Here are the best mac hard drives and external storage options in 2020. After you connect an external hard drive to your mac, if everything is working fine, the operating system will automatically recognize, read, and mount your external drive, as well as show it in the finder and on the desktop. Anyone who uses a mac computer knows that the included internal hard drive tends to fill up quickly. The best ways to format an external drive for windows and. The best external dvd and cd drives are compact and lightweight, so they wont take much space in your bag but will be a great bonus for your 2in1 laptop or gaming pc. External hard drive for mac and pc with data interchangeable. How to use seagate external hard drive on mac, 16 ways. Product title usb external dvd cd rw disc burner combo drive reade. External slim cd rw dvd rom portable disk drive usb 2. Usb c typec ultra slim external dvd driveburneroptical drive cd rw dvd rw superdrive disc duplicator compatible with mac macbook pro air imac and laptop. Having this external drive you will be able to play and burn cds as well as dvds, create backup discs and install program software. Youll need to purchase an external disc drive and connect it directly to a mac or windows pc without an optical drive if you want all the features an optical drive offers. The lacie porsche design is one of the best external hard drives for macs on sale today, and comes with both usb typec to typea and usb typec to typec connectors, making it a versatile way to expand the storage space of your mac, regardless of what ports it has. Make sure your external hard drive is attached and mounted to your mac.
Flash drives like thumb drives are external hardware devices that you can add to your mac for additional storage room or as secure places to back up your data. When you try to plug in the drive again, your mac no longer sees it. Create a bootable lion install drive for newer macs. How to connect an external drive to your imac dummies. It could be that you are trying to connect something only fit to interact with windows devices. If you want to make use of your macs thunderbolt port, then this is the best external hard drive for macs. Discover the world of external hard drives for mac.
The remote disc feature of your mac lets you use files stored on a cd or dvd hosted from another computer. Choosing disk format type while formatting external drive. Ive used lg, hp and toshiba portable dvd drives over the years. The last apple mac to ship with an optical cd or dvd drive was a in macbook. Macs no longer have internal dvd and cdrw drives, but for mac users who still need to use optical discs the apple superdrive offers an external allinone usb solution that can read and write both cd and dvd discs, all you have to do is plug it into a usb port on the mac and mac os will detect the superdrive. This is fairly uncommon these days, but it was the primary method of accessing recovery partitions before mac os x became a download from. Best external hard drives for macs in 2020 techradar. You can also share discs from the optical drive of another mac, or from a windows computer.
Note that you can buy any cd or dvd with maximum data storage capacity and then transfer your data from one computer to another. One more representative of the best cd and dvd drives is apple usb superdrive. An external drives file system is the most important factor that determines whether or not its readable by macs, pcs, or both. You can connect this superdrive with your macbook pro with retina display, macbook air, imac, or mac mini with a single usb type a cable. Install older osx from disc to external drive under mojave. If your mac doesnt have a builtin optical drive and you need to use a cd or dvd, you can connect an external drive like the apple usb superdrive. Choosing the right format for your external hard drive b. Sometimes our macbooks, macbook pros, or macs dont recognize our external drives or external thumb drives. If you want to make use of your mac s thunderbolt port, then this is the best external hard drive for macs. This mac external cd drive reads a disc at the speed of 10. A lot of mac users say this is the best external drive they have ever purchased. Use the cd or dvd drive from another computer with your.
Even if the dvd drive of your personal computer has been broken, you can simply replace it with a usb external dvd drive. So if youre planning to get an external drive to connect to a mac that is devoid of such a device, think about getting one that includes bluray. Improved performance consider setting your computer to run an external drive as a boot drive to increase speed and performance. Here, you see one internal hard drive the 1tb sata entry, which is selected and one usb external hard drive the toshiba. I cant edit external hard drives on macs your business.
One more representative of the best cd and dvd drives is apple usb. Or is it that your household has a few macs and pcs. How to use cds, dvds, and blurays on a mac without an. If you find the external hard disk showing up in disk management as unallocatednot initializedoffline, it would be easy to fix the external hard drive not recognized problem. Is the disc drive on your macbook refusing to work. Du kannst auch datentrager vom optischen laufwerk eines anderen mac.