Use your MacDrive as an external device

Long story:

I added my bargain SSD into my MacBook and was overwhelmed about the speed improvement. Unfortunately, SSD’s are still expensive so I decided to get rid of my MacDrive and put my ‘old’ HDD in there instead. This will cost you (without mentioning the risk of loosing warranty) about 15 bucks on ebay (+the USB adapter case for the MacDrive).

However after adding the HDD and being happy about 620GB in my MacBook I had a small setback. The external device didn’t work. I’ve read, that some ChinaShipping goods may be not manufactured very well. Someone wrote that the contacts inside the case were blocked by a plastic pieces. I checked this out but it seemed to be more something like a software issue.

Short:

I found the solution in this Blog and for my memory I will recap it briefly.

  1. Go get this awesome tool (0xED) to edit the needed systemfile
  2. Go to this folder
  3. /System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A

  4. Backup the file ‘DVDPlayback’ and yes, do back it up! If you mess up, you’ll have a problem
  5. Open a copy of the (backup) file with the awesome editor
  6. Search for ‘Internal’ and replace it with ‘External’ should be found about 4 times
  7. Now save the file and try to somehow move it back to the system folder
    This might not work without root access, try Pathfinder (which is something you should try anyway) or terminal
  8. sudo mv /dir/to/file/DVDPlayback /System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A/
  9. That’s it, your device should work now.