Last week, this was big news in the Apple world: the new Mac mini will ship without a built-in SuperDrive DVD-drive leaving room for a 2nd HDD drive.
New Mac Mini has no SuperDrive, but room for a second HDD - image courtesy of Engadget
This was in fact the main reason I bought a Mac Mini Server last year: it had 2 HDD drives built in and no SuperDrive.
The last time I used optical drives for storage media since was back when I bought a ThinkPad A20p early in 2000 (yes, I’ve lived in both the Mac and PC world for decades now).
One of the first things I did back then was buying an Ultrabay 2000 HDD Adapter, so I could fit in a second HDD and ditch the DVD-ROM player.
Since then, I loaded CDs and DVDs using ISO image files usingthe Daemon tools virtual DVD drive.
The Apple Mac lagged behind on this very much, I’m not sure at which Mac OS version they finally introduced support for ISO images in Disk Utility, no later than OS X in 2007 though.
Is this big news?
In the Mac world, apparantly so, but I have lived without optical drives for using data for over a decade now.
In fact, the only two reasons I still have DVD drives are:
- They are the only way to transfer recorded TV broadcasts from my Philips DVD/HDD and Medion DVD/HDD recorders to other platforms
- To help out foundations and voluntary organizations (like Stichting de Zevensprong that organizes activities for people with mental retardation) to distribute multimedia of their activities.
Looking around me, I’m certainly not alone.
Having two HDDs (or three, like the ThinkPad A31p in 2002, and the ThinkPad W70x in 2008) makes it so much easier to make backups or have more storage.
I’m glad I have being able to to that for a very long time, even on a Mac.
–jeroen
via: Apple updates Mac mini: Core i5 and i7, Thunderbolt, AMD Radeon HD, no SuperDrive — Engadget.
PS: Don’t forget to hug your SysAdmin today!
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