G4 CD drive problem URGENT - 09/30/09 10:08 AM
The CD drive in one of the G4s appears to have packed up - at 3 a.m. this morning. This is absolutely vital to our business.
We prepare our work on PDFs, burn them to CD, send CD to outside printing firm for large-scale print-run. This is a weekly production.
The other G4 I now discover does not burn disks, it only reads them.
Symptoms when I came in this morning: the drive opens, will take disk on tray, closes. Disk mounts on desktop.
Do you want to format this? happens as usual. Drag and drop folder of PDFs to disk, ok. Click on burn CD, ok.
Then it goes away and makes a lot of clonking noises, nearly gets to the end (verify disk) and then gives up, saying the disk is unreliable. Have tried three different brand new CDs, same result each time. The clonking noises make me think it's the drive not the media.
Now, my idea is to source an external CD drive for this G4 and get it here within the week. At first glance there appear to be a few on the market which would do the job.
HOWEVER, I have since learned that you cannot boot from a USB powered disk! Therefore whilst we would be able to carry on production as usual, in the event Heaven-Forfend, of needing to emergency boot this old G4 from a CD.....without the built in CD drive we're stuffed, right? Or do you think that it's just the "burning" function which doesn't work now? I have no intention of trying to boot from that drive as an experiment!!!
ALSO, this old G4 runs under OS9. So, even if I can find an external CD drive which is *not* USB-powered, would there be an OS-compatibility problem? I really do not know if the software/drivers work on any Mac OS or not, since I've never bought one before.
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There are work-arounds. We can simply email the printing company our PDFs, which is what happened at 3 a.m.
We could put the PDFs on a memory stick, then put that memory stick into one of the iMacs here, and burn a CD from there.
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Either of those work-arounds, however, still leave a malfunctioning/dead CD drive in the G4 with potential unbootability-issues in the future.
I hope I have not muddled any of you helpful people. I need to get a solution fast - as I said, we're in weekly production.
Many thanks
We prepare our work on PDFs, burn them to CD, send CD to outside printing firm for large-scale print-run. This is a weekly production.
The other G4 I now discover does not burn disks, it only reads them.
Symptoms when I came in this morning: the drive opens, will take disk on tray, closes. Disk mounts on desktop.
Do you want to format this? happens as usual. Drag and drop folder of PDFs to disk, ok. Click on burn CD, ok.
Then it goes away and makes a lot of clonking noises, nearly gets to the end (verify disk) and then gives up, saying the disk is unreliable. Have tried three different brand new CDs, same result each time. The clonking noises make me think it's the drive not the media.
Now, my idea is to source an external CD drive for this G4 and get it here within the week. At first glance there appear to be a few on the market which would do the job.
HOWEVER, I have since learned that you cannot boot from a USB powered disk! Therefore whilst we would be able to carry on production as usual, in the event Heaven-Forfend, of needing to emergency boot this old G4 from a CD.....without the built in CD drive we're stuffed, right? Or do you think that it's just the "burning" function which doesn't work now? I have no intention of trying to boot from that drive as an experiment!!!
ALSO, this old G4 runs under OS9. So, even if I can find an external CD drive which is *not* USB-powered, would there be an OS-compatibility problem? I really do not know if the software/drivers work on any Mac OS or not, since I've never bought one before.
-----------
There are work-arounds. We can simply email the printing company our PDFs, which is what happened at 3 a.m.
We could put the PDFs on a memory stick, then put that memory stick into one of the iMacs here, and burn a CD from there.
-----------
Either of those work-arounds, however, still leave a malfunctioning/dead CD drive in the G4 with potential unbootability-issues in the future.
I hope I have not muddled any of you helpful people. I need to get a solution fast - as I said, we're in weekly production.
Many thanks