I only used this internal burner for maybe 20 burns tops. Is that crazy to die so soon? I had a hard time understanding that paragraph Joe.
Uncommon perhaps, but certainly not beyond the realm of possibility
I think if one media does not burn on internal but burns fine on the new external, that shows the internal is bad.
There are two possibilities here…
- The drive is bad
- The drive is not compatible with the particular media
I have two optical drives on my iMac, the internal drive that came from the factory and an external drive that is LightScribe capable. I occasionally come across discs that will either not burn or read in the internal drive that do work in the external drive and although it is rare there is the occasional disc that the external drive will not write or read and the internal drive handles is with aplomb.
Do you think my new USB external wont be good being it's not firewire?
(I bookmarked the OWC, just in case)
No I do not think an external will not be any good because it uses a USB interface. My
personal preference would be a firewire interface. As V1 has pointed out there is a LOT of variation in USB chips and the particular chip used by the enclosure manufacturer is generally not something that is under the purchaser's direct control. The best you can do in that case is purchase products from manufacturers with a known good reputation — which may well mean you will spend a few dollars more.
I would never try to replace an internal. But I could put an ad on craigs list. It's amazing -- I've found really good people there for really reasonable rates. But that is luck of the draw. When I'm ready to sell the imac 27" on ebay, it just kills the ad to say, imac for sell, works great, but the DVD burner may have some problems. No? Wouldn't just kill the bidding process??
Better selling it with an external drive than dead in the water because some kid that is a genius repairing PCs discovered there is a huge difference in PCs and Macs and trashed your iMac. Or you might get lucky. There is really only one way to find out. It is all a matter of deciding how great your risk tolerance is and are you willing to shell out for a new iMac if your old one gets converted into a paper weight.
