Use another partition on a second computer This may or may not work, depending on the computer being used. Boot the broken computer and hold the options key to see if the drive shows up. Boot the second Mac and press the "T" key to get into target disk mode, from which the optical drive may become available to the broken computer via the firewire connection. If you do not have a spare hard drive or optical drive, try inserting the DVD into a second Mac and connecting it to the broken computer with a firewire cable. From here, you can then connect the drive to the broken Mac, start it up, and hold the options key to select the bootable installation drive. If you connect the device to another Mac, you can use Disk Utility to create a disk image of the installation DVD, and then restore it to the external drive. Many times these have been put in a closet somewhere since most computers come with optical drives that can burn DVDs, but if you have one, give it a shot.Ī more robust option than optical drives is to use an external hard drive, which can include thumb drives or even an iPod. If you have an external firewire or USB DVD drive, that can also be used to install OS X. Newer Mac Pros do not come with ATA optical drives. Be sure to check whether or not your system uses the older ATA or the newer SATA connections before purchasing a replacement drive. If you need to send the system in for servicing, then you may wish to read on for other options. Granted I just said this would take the computer out of commission, but if you have a Mac Pro or old PowerMac it may be easier to pop the thing open and replace the drive from another system or by getting a new one from a local computer store. Unfortunately, recent MacBook models cannot use target disk mode, so the options are more limited for these computers. Some of these options require you to have a system that will boot into target disk mode, which is only available on those with built-in firewire. Meanwhile, there are a few approaches to reinstalling OS X that may work. While broken drives can be easily fixed or replaced, it does take your computer out of commission for the time it takes the repairs to be done. Sometimes you may need to reinstall OS X on a computer, but the drive is broken, resulting in an obvious problem with reading the installation DVD.
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