interesting situation

Mr_bumpy · 08-19-2008, 10:52 PM

My girlfriend and I both have macbooks. She wants leopard, and I have leopard... Here's the catch... her DVD drive crapped out on her, so we can't do a clean install via dvd.

Now, my question is this: is it possible to connect the two computers via firewire or usb to use the other computer's cd drive? In other words, is it possible to use MY macbook, with the working dvd drive, as a glorified external dvd drive?

123RMud · 08-20-2008, 12:59 PM

No. What you are thinking about is called Target Disk Mode where a Mac is used as an external hard drive to another Mac via a FireWire cable. Once a Mac is the slave in a TGM session, it's optical drive will not be visible to the host Mac. Only the hard disk.

The best thing you could do is get your girl friend's optical drive repaired, or purchase an external optical drive.

sinclair_tm · 08-20-2008, 02:19 PM

You can do remote installes of OS X 10.5. It's a new feature intorduced with this version. It was for the Macbook Air, but I have heard that it works with other Macbooks too, sometimes. Here are the instructions. There is also an app in the utilities folder of my desktop Mac running 10.5 that is named remote install, but that may be for putting apps on the Air, and not an OS. I have never done it myself, but it's worth a try. Let us know if it worked for you.

08-19-2008, 10:52 PM	#1 (permalink)
Mr_bumpy Registered User Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 34 OS: winxp pro	interesting situation My girlfriend and I both have macbooks. She wants leopard, and I have leopard... Here's the catch... her DVD drive crapped out on her, so we can't do a clean install via dvd. Now, my question is this: is it possible to connect the two computers via firewire or usb to use the other computer's cd drive? In other words, is it possible to use MY macbook, with the working dvd drive, as a glorified external dvd drive?

08-20-2008, 12:59 PM	#2 (permalink)
123RMud Registered User Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 4 OS: Mac OS 10.4.11	Re: interesting situation No. What you are thinking about is called Target Disk Mode where a Mac is used as an external hard drive to another Mac via a FireWire cable. Once a Mac is the slave in a TGM session, it's optical drive will not be visible to the host Mac. Only the hard disk. The best thing you could do is get your girl friend's optical drive repaired, or purchase an external optical drive.