Once you’re in, there are a variety of things you can do: Once that is done, you will see the DVD drive on the target PC. Locate the name of your shared folder, the DVD drive on the PC, and double-click it. You will then be presented with a window, and at the top of it it gives you the option to “Connect As.”Ĭlick the button and type in the user name and password from the target PC. In Finder, choose the menu item “Go -> Connect to Server.”Ĭlick Browse and you will see a list of shared folders on your network.

Once the drive is shared on the PC, you are ready to go back to the Mac and load the optical drive in the Finder. Now this drive is being shared on the network.Ĭlick okay, and the PC part of it is done. Tick the checkbox marked “Share This Folder” and give it a name so you can identify it on the network. Or click Properties, then the Sharing Tab, and click the Advanced Sharing button under your DVD/CD drive. Choose “Share with -> Advanced Sharing” from the drop-down menu. Find the optical drive and right-click on it. If the target computer is on the network, in order to access the drive, you first have to make sure that sharing is enabled for that drive. Do note that this applies to all other Macs as well.

In this article we cover sharing and connecting to another computer’s optical drive to copy files to the Mac Mini. And also a person with a Mac might not have an optical drive either, so you’d be back to square one. Why a PC? Well, statistically it’s more likely in an emergency that you’ll be able to find a friend who has a Windows PC than one who has a Mac. Obviously there are limitations to this approach, but for emergencies, it’s good to know. This saves you money, and to be honest, it’s fun to do. You could just buy an external optical drive, but if you already have a desktop or laptop PC (or access to a friend’s), you can just share the drive on the PC over the network and leech files from it.

Can you use a mac dvd drive on a pc