import cd on iMac w/o drive from 2nd Mac

Two options:

What I am doing: On the computer that has an optical disk, I archive the CD as a disk image using Disk Utility. Than I transfer the disk image using a thumbs drive to my MBP without the optical drive and double click it to mount it.

Or try CD/DVD sharing; from the Finder's Help entry:

Use another computer’s DVD or CD drive

If your computer doesn’t have an optical drive, and you are connected to a computer that has one, you can use a DVD or CD disc in the other computer’s optical drive. The computer with the optical drive must have Mac OS X v10.4.10 or later, or Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Note: If a disc is copy-protected (such as some DVD movies and games), you can’t share it using DVD or CD sharing.

1. Make sure both computers are on the same network (wired or wireless), and the DVD or CD Sharing software is installed on the computer with the optical drive.
2. Make sure the computer with the optical drive is set up to share the disc.

   On a computer with Mac OS X v10.4.10 or later:	Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Sharing, and then select the “DVD or CD Sharing” checkbox. Select “Ask me before allowing others to use my DVD drive” if you want to be notified when a computer tries to access the drive.
   On a computer with Windows XP or Vista:	Open the DVD or CD Sharing control panel and select “Enable Remote DVD or CD.” Select “Ask me before allowing others to use my DVD drive” if you want to be notified when a computer tries to access the drive.

3. Insert the disc into the optical drive.
4. On the computer without the optical drive, select Remote Disc under Devices in a Finder window sidebar. If you see the “Ask to use” button, click it.

For more information about using another computer’s optical drive, including downloading and installing the DVD or CD Sharing Update for Windows, see:

Apple Support article: How to use Remote Disc to share DVDs or CDs from a Mac or Windows-based computer

RELATED TOPICS

Share your DVD or CD drive

Regards

Léonie

Have you tried to create a disk image from your media? Launch Disk Utility and select the CD in left column of the panel, then click the "New Image" button in the toolbar. You can transfer this image either on an USB thumbs drive or simply in the public folder of your macs using your network,

If Disk Utility refuses to create an image from your CD, create a folder in your shared folder, rip your CD and drag the single tracks to the folder.Then transfer the folder.

I have the same problem. Not sure what to do.

On my older iMac, the disk utility has the New Image greyed out, so I can't use it.

I have managed to copy the tracks to a folder on my old iMac and then transfer it across to my new iMac, then imported it into iTunes 11, but the information is lost (i.e. it says Audio Track 1, 2 etc.)

Is there a different way of doing this so that the information is not lost??

Hello, I don't know whether this issue is solved, I managed to find an (2015 Apple-official?) way to get your:

- audio cd's,

- through a shared cd player in an older iMac (running 10.7, iTunes 11),

- imported in iTunes on your cd playerless new iMac (running Yosemite, iTunes 12):

(Both machines needs to be on same wifi network, homesharing (or whatever it is named in English, search for 'shared playlists itunes' on how to) must be an option and enabled on both machines. If that's the case you'll be good without disk imaging, usb hassles, or buying an external drive...) Here's how:

On your old iMac, start iTunes and create an new playlist. Insert your audio cd, all the titles wil appear. Now select <Start import>, only to make a choice in what format you want the songs to be imported (search the internet what option to choose and why). Now, select the songs you wish to import and drag this selection onto the playlist you just created. The selected songs will now be imported to the old iMac.

Since you have the homesharing option enabled on both your machines, the new playlist you created is also visible in iTunes on your cd playerless device. And the selected songs are in it! But wait, one step more to go! Select these (on your newer iMac) an select <Import> in the lower-right corner. That's it.

Repeat for every audio cd, time used depends on the format (and thus file size) you choose. Mayor advantage is that all titles are complete, just albumcover is missing...

After 2 years it is probably dormant. 🙂

Your solution isn't strictly what the original post (OP) wanted to do. For some reason the OP didn't want to rip the CD on the first computer and then simply transfer the ripped files to second computer which is what importing to iTunes on the old computer and then transferring the files via a sharing method does. The OP wanted to borrow the optical drive on the first computer and then use iTunes on the second computer to rip the CD directly to the second computer. Which drive borrowing (Remote Disc) is possible under certain scenarios it won't work for ripping and another poster observed.

Not so dormant. I just now encountered this problem while trying to rip CDs into iTunes on our MacMini server.

We can't use Jeff@pple's shared playlist routine as the machine with the DVD drive is running iTunes 10.7 (it's our main music player machine can't stand the new interface, plus we love coverflow) while the Mini has iTunes 12 (so it can sync with my iPhone). I can rip into iTunes 10.7, then drag the ripped folder into the Automatically Add to iTunes folder on the Mini, but I wanted to start on the Mini and let Music Match fill in the info, then add them to th eolder iTunes, but guess that Disk Sharing simply can not work with iTunes - perhaps it's a licensing thing buried deep in the volumes of legalese Apple had to negotiate with the media tyrants....

Yes, nothing has changed since the original 2013 posts.

There is one option that wasn't mentioned yet that involves iTunes Home Sharing. Assuming you have a login account on the second computer with the cd drive (meaning that its not a friends computer), import the cd to iTunes on that computer. Enable Home Sharing with your Apple ID on both computers. On the first computer, click the home icon in the top left and switch it to showing music from your second mac. (they must both me connected to the same network to be able to connect)

At the bottom there is a menu that says "Show: All Items" or "Show: Items not in my library". Pick the second. This will allow you to see the newest album you just imported more easily. Then just select all of the songs you want to transfer and then click "import" at the bottom.

This works well for me because I like to cary all of my music with me on the laptop with the cd drive as well as on my iMac which doesn't have a cd drive. I also use this to exchange music with my wife's mac, I added her as a family member to my Home Sharing account while we each have our own Apple ID.

Another note I will add, if you need to transfer hundreds or thousands of songs I don't recommend using home sharing. I've had it disconnect in the middle of large transfers and I had no idea what it did or didn't transfer so I had to start over. In that case I recommend using an external hard drive and dragging the files from the iTunes media folder to the iTunes app to import them.

I hope this was helpful.

Yes, it wasn't mentioned but then Home Sharing didn't exist when the first batch of posts were made to this topic 2 years ago. 😉 Home Sharing also does not (as I have said before) actually share the optical drive (which seemed to be a desired aspect by the original poster), it simply adds another way of transferring files already ripped. It seems the primary affront was the audacity of Apple posting a help article on how to rip CDs using an optical drive when computers were being introduced without optical drives. 🙂

I am using the current as of this posting (21 Dec 2015: 12.3.2.35) versions of iTunes on a Mac Mini with no optical drive and an ancient PC running a fully patched version of Windows 7 (but of course having an CD drive). Having Home Sharing turned on and iTunes using my Apple ID, allowed me to tick the share entire library on the Windows PD. I also ticked Home Sharing on the PC for good measure. On the Mac I was then able to see and import the music using the Home shaped icon with a music note at the upper left of iTunes on the Mac. Once the music was on the Mac, it could be synced to a iPod Nano that I had connected to the Mac.

I thought I might share something I've just done, which suits me very well. It can work either permanently or just whenever you need to 'borrow' an optical drive from another mac temporarily.

In this example below, I am using the optical drive of an old iMac G5 (running Leopard) to add files directly to my Mac mini's iTunes (El Capitan).

1. Mount as a server on my old iMac G5 the drive containing my Mac mini's *real* iTunes library (which in my case is on an external USB HD attached to my Mac mini, but it could just as easily be my in Mac mini's home folder (/Music/iTunes) as normal).

2. In iTunes on the old machine (iMac G5), change the address of its iTunes music folder (prefs-->Advanced) to the "Automatically add to iTunes" folder that is located inside the iTunes Media folder belonging to my Mac mini's copy of iTunes (in my case, on my USB drive).

3. Import CDs using the old iTunes. These are written magically to my real iTunes collection, and appear as normal in my real iTunes library on the Mac mini.

NB – The iMac G5 can't play these files. It cannot actually find them, because the "Automatically add to iTunes" folder is a 'Folder Action' style folder: it keeps nothing inside itself – it just sends the files to iTunes for copying and indexing. Accordingly, once the import on the old machine is complete, I simply delete the track entries from the iMac G5's library (not the mp3 files themselves - which the old Mac cannot even offer to do). Accordingly, if you want actually to USE both machines' iTunes libraries (which I don't), then simply do this import trick via a separate second library on the old machine with the optical drive. In other words, quit the old machine's iTunes, open it again with the Option (alt) key held down, and create a library for this purpose (following the steps above). When you're done importing to the machine without an optical drive, quit the old machine's iTunes and reopen it, again holding down the Option key to choose your old machine's real, functioning library.