Tips & Tricks
Using the external USB-DVD-drive with the DVD-player app
The DVD-Player application of Mac OS X is bound to the internal DVD-drive by default. This is adverse if you have dismounted the DVD-drive to use it as an external USB-DVD-drive. The following error-message will appear:
To use the external drive with the DVD-Player app you will need to download and install the free binary editor 0xed. 0xed is nothing else but a text editor like the preinstalled TextEdit, which however can edit binary files.
Before starting with 0xed you should make a backup of the following file (i.e. copying it to the desktop in a "Backup"-folder):
/System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A/DVDPlayback
Afterwards you open the original DVDPlayback-file with 0xed and change all appearances of "Internal" to "External". This works best with the search&replace function of 0xed like shown in this screenshot:
Afterwards save the DVDPlayback file with "Save as..." to the desktop (without overwriting your backup file!) and copy the modified file to the system folder shown above. To overwrite the original file you probably need to identify as admin by typing in your password.
IMPORTANT: Now connect the DVD-drive to your computer (if nat already connected)! After the drive has been initialized by Mac OS X you can normally start the DVD-Player application and the external DVD-drive should work normally for DVD-playback.
Relinking the iPhoto-Library
In case of iPhoto not finding the library and is empty on startup or showing an error, you can start it again holding down the "ALT" key. The following dialogue will pop up to link the iPhoto library from the HDD. Normally this step isn't necessary though.
