Can I just use any slot-loading internal SATA drive?

[craig0ry]

Greetings!

My Superdrive (Matshita UJ-846) is gone for good. I already made another post about this months ago and some helpful users pointed me to some replacements.

However, I keep looking at the basic slim slot-loading burners on Newegg for hundreds less than the "replacement" drives the Mac specialty sites sell.

My only concern is that I have read occasional threads where the OS won't natively recognize a non-stock drive. That's very important for me because I hardly ever use Toast - most of my burning I just do through the OS or iTunes.

I believe these are all very old threads where the users were probably running 10.4 and earlier. So can anyone let me know if, running Leopard, I can just use any old internal, slim, slot-loading burner? It would save me a lot of money!

Thanks in advance,
-Craig

 

[TheStu]

Panasonic makes one that a lot of people put into Minis. I cannot recall the model number off the top of my head, but it runs around $80 and will fit in the iMac

 

[timswim78]

Look it up here:
http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/...b/search.drivedb.lasso

 

[craig0ry]

"There are currently no reports in the database that match your search parameters. Try back soon!"

🙁

However, at the same time, it does say:

"With OS X 10.4.x (aka Tiger) and OS X 10.5.x (aka Leopard), most all DVD burners have native 'generic' iApps burn support. (For OS X 10.3.x and before, generally most drives (except those apple used in macs up to and before that OS era) will require a 3rd party driver/Patchburn profile for iApps burn support. Toast however does not rely on apple burn support.) "

I'm just gonna give it a shot.

Thanks for all the feedback guys - it is appreciated.