No DVD drive in new iMac ???

Got 3 of them, repaired many of them.

nope

😊

So you're saying no from experience and im saying yes for experience... There has to be a result to this.

Evidently you don't know the differnece between backups and archiving.

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

Where did you get the notion that a superdrive runs "hot"? 😊

1. By direct measurement of the case while burning a DVD with a temperature probe.

2. Indirectly, by the fact that Apple often includes sensors to monitor its temperture & boost fan speeds when it gets hot. (In fact, one of the three fans in my 2008 iMac is dedicated to blowing air directly over the SuperDrive.)

3. Indirectly, by noting the temperture of a burned disc after it is ejected.

4. From an understand of the physical process: lasers "burn" discs by focusing energy on the dye (or equivalent), causing it to heat up & change its opacity. The faster the burn, the more heat is produced in a shorter period of time. That heat has to go somewhere.

other than fans, everything is approaching near-100% to no moving parts.

Unless you count the rapidly spinning disc, the motor that spins it, & the carriage that moves the laser across the disc. 😁

M-disk is new tech, and is unproven in the extreme. Indications are that its base layer is too soft

Who exactly is saying that & what do they mean by "too soft"? I could claim that conventional DVD's are too soft because they are easily scratched by grit & grime commonly found in homes & offices, but all that really counts is how well either kind stands up to normal handling.

And while we are on the subject, that is one of the weaknesses of all optical discs. They require handling the media itself & are thus susceptible to contamination & scratches. They are also relatively brittle & often do not survive edge-on impacts without cracking or delamination. By contrast, contemporary 2.5" hard drives typically can survive up to 30 G impacts while operating & as much as 100 G impacts while not operating, making them among the most physically rugged data storage devices around.

R C-R wrote:

other than fans, everything is approaching near-100% to no moving parts.

Unless you count the rapidly spinning disc, the motor that spins it, & the carriage that moves the laser across the disc. 😁

And while we are on the subject, that is one of the weaknesses of all optical discs. They require handling the media itself & are thus susceptible to contamination & scratches.

I was referring to the fact that in the macbook Air / Pro line (other than the older non-Retina), the only moving part is the fan, there is no spinning disk(s), SSD as you know of course isnt a HD

I was not referring to DVD read/writes in relation to "moving parts" 😉

I know about DVD scratches, thats what professional acid-free Tyvek bags are for, for DVDs

Everything requires 'special handling' unless you plan on writing the data in stone with a chisel.

Nah, Ive got 96 or 100+ hard drives here around me, and rightly I dont trust any of them.

Same reason I have 4 redundant hard drive (multiple) copies of the 42 Terabytes, and 3 servers around the globe.

"They require handling (DVD)"

I dont know how youre grabbing your optical disks, but its "at the edge and only from an acid free sleeve (Tyvek or better)"

You are right, these things are subjective, I get that you'd like Apple to reconsider the optical drive. I'd like Apple to add the RAM servicing slot back on 21.5" iMacs myself.

Debating whether optical media is dead or not is pointless, because it is not, its less popular than it was, but its not dead you are right. My lack of faith is partly because of data loss in the past with optical disc, both purchased music CDs and my own burned CDs, they "rotted", not that I never lost anything on HDDs. And you are right about hard drives cost, I have a backup drive and a back up of that back up.

To let a lack of DVD drive stop you from buying a Mac though, that's quite a shame, I would certainly just buy an external drive, like the one you linked to, that LG looks posh too. A better way to say it, let other more important reason be what stops you from buying a Mac, because getting an external optical drive isn't difficult at all, the work around is easy for this problem.

Cheers

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

I was not referring to DVD read/writes in relation to "moving parts" 😉

So what does that have to do with a topic about the lack of a DVD drive in the new iMacs?

Please remember the Terms of Use admonition to stay on topic. This discussion is hard enough to follow without all the off-topic noise.

nerdatheart

My lack of faith is partly because of data loss in the past with optical disc, both purchased music CDs and my own burned CDs, they "rotted"

The error you are making is not using professional grade DVD media that dont ROT (unless you foolishly store or handle them)

here you go:

http://www.supermediastore.com/product/u/jvc-taiyo-yuden-shiny-silver-thermal-8x -dvd-plus-r-media-white-paper-sleeves-clear-window-100pk-jdpr-zz-sb8-pslv-4cw100 pk-linkyo

R C-R wrote:

This discussion is hard enough to follow without all the off-topic noise.

Red Herring, you have been discussing M-Disks and otherwise for the past 8 pages 😊

And the OP has his / her answer

I'll call BS on the hot optical drive. I have an external, compact BluRay drive that I use with my Macbook. You can touch it at any time during the burning process and never know it was running except for the vibration of the mechanism. If you have an optical drive that is runing that hot you had better notify the military that one of their weapons grade lasers is missing.

Not sure who said this... "My peronal collection of 70 Gigabytes of work Ive spent 100 billion hours (lol) and 20 years on, ...THATS on multiple DVD pro-grade archival burns"

My advice... lose the DVD burner and get a BluRay Burner. That is only 3 discs on M-disc BluRay. Or you can chose the multi-layer organinc dye (not as good for archive as M-disc, but one disc will hold 128 gig.

justamacguy wrote:

I'll call BS on the hot optical drive. I have an external, compact BluRay drive that I use with my Macbook. You can touch it at any time during the burning process and never know it was running except for the vibration of the mechanism.

If the internal SuperDrives in iMacs don't run hot, then why is one of the three fans in my 2008 iMac dedicated to blowing air across it? Why did that fan spin up every time I burned a disc? Why did iStat Pro show that the sensor Apple attaches to the metal case top of the drive (& the SMC monitors) reported a 20° C rise in case temperature by the end of a burn? Why did my temperature probe show the same thing?

But I would like to know the make & model of your Blu-ray drive, especially if it can do at least 8X speed DVD burns, is bus powered, & when used with a MacBook doesn't require plugging in a second USB cable to get enough power to do that. The wife of a friend wants to show her technical savvy by giving her hubby a BD burner as a Christmas gift. I was asked to find out what he wanted spec wise & to suggest one based on that.

This way, if he doesn't like it, I can blame that on you. 😉

My advice... lose the DVD burner and get a BluRay Burner. That is only 3 discs on M-disc BluRay.

Are there such things a Blu-Ray M-disks? I thought they were limited to the SL DVD capacity of 4.7 GB per disc.

I have no idea why Apple put the fans on the optical drives in the iMac unless it was to use the opening for the optical drive to vent air to and from the computer. The one thing that will really heats the imac up when burning an optical is if you are encoding at the time of burning. That drives temperatures through the roof on the CPU and RAM.

This is what I'm using on my macbook and it does burn right off the usb port. It is sensitive to movement though. Once you start a burn don’t try to move the machine to another location or you will get an error. It has a Panasonic mechanism in it. (if you notice on that burner, there is zero venting. If there were a heat issue they would at least have vent slots on it.) Also, 8x is hard to find in the small portables.

http://www.amazon.com/External-Uj-240-Blu-ray-Writer-Burner/dp/B00DO7FN4O/ref=sr _1_192?ie=UTF8&qid=1386086796&sr=8-192&keywords=bluray+writer+external

However, when I purchase again… and what I would recommend to someone… would be this one instead, which also is M-disc compatible.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/800971532-USE/lg_electronics_bp40ns20_exte rnal_super_multi_blue.html

If she buys this one and doesn't like it, I'll take the blame... and I'll buy it from her. But I think she'll love you for it.

justamacguy wrote:

I have no idea why Apple put the fans on the optical drives in the iMac unless it was to use the opening for the optical drive to vent air to and from the computer.

No, the fan on a 2008 iMac is ducted & positioned to blow air directly across the metal plate of the SuperDrive's enclosure. There is no other heat producing component near it & it does without a doubt heat up during burns.

Like I said, this can be confirmed by using iStat Pro on any Mac that includes a built-in temperature sensor on the Superdrive or by direct measurement with a temperature probe if you have one & are willing to open the case & attach it to that plate. (You must of course be able to close the Mac's case for the measurement, so you will need a thin probe with thin wires that can be routed out through a vent or similar opening.)

Of course, hot is a relative term & what works well for cooling in an external drive exposed to ambient air doesn't necessarily work well inside a case full of other components that have their own temperature sensitivities (like LCD screens). Also, as burn speeds increase, so does the power needed to burn the data (since there is less time to burn any area of the disc), & more power means more generated heat that must be removed. That's why bus powered external drives often need a second USB plug to get enough power for 8X burns & why the higher speed ones require separate power supplies (which also generate heat).

Apple takes all this & more into consideration in the thermal design of its products, even though most users don't. It isn't rocket science, but there is more to it than many users think.

Regarding your recommendations, the LG looks promising, but I wonder if it needs the second USB plug to do 8X burns. I can't find anything about that on LG's product page, but I know their less expensive GP60NS50 model (similar but no Blu-ray support) does require that for some Macs, most probably including all the old MacBooks since they don't support the higher power USB standard originally intended for charging ports.

I will pass along your recommendation anyway. Thanks for that.

FWIW I can certainly confirm that the SuperDrive in my wife's '08 iMac heated up noticably when I used to burn DVD's. According to iStat Menus the optical drive sensor would increase anywhere from 15c to 20c during the burn process.

A year or so ago I installed an SSD and took some photos of the inside. Here's one showing the SuperDrive's dedicated cooling fan.

richsadams wrote:

Here's one showing the SuperDrive's dedicated cooling fan.

Nope

thats the dual fans used to cycle air AROUND the logic board and then up towards the TOP

(hot air rises) put you hand top of back, and you'll notice the heat escaping

thats not a "dedicated superdrive fan" but a complimentary fan for cycling air across the logic board CPU/GPU

One fan alone isn't sufficient to cycle thru and around the Imac 😊