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Power Macintosh G5 Q&A - Updated April 2, 2009
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What are the capabilities of the "SuperDrive" provided by the Power Mac G5? How do you upgrade or replace the optical drive?
All configurations of the Power Macintosh G5 shipped with a "SuperDrive" capable of reading CD-ROM and DVD-ROM and writing to at least CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD-R. Models in the "Early 2005" and "Late 2005" subfamilies are also capable of writing to dual-layer DVD.
For your convenience, the optical capabilities of each model are listed below:
Power Mac G5 | Optical Drive | Apple Subfamily |
4X "SuperDrive" | Original | |
4X "SuperDrive" | Original | |
4X "SuperDrive" | Original | |
4X "SuperDrive" | Original/Late 2003 | |
8X "SuperDrive" | June 2004 | |
8X "SuperDrive" | June 2004 | |
8X "SuperDrive" | June 2004 | |
8X "SuperDrive" | October 2004 | |
4X DL "SuperDrive" | Early 2005 | |
4X DL "SuperDrive" | Early 2005 | |
4X DL "SuperDrive" | Early 2005 | |
6X DL "SuperDrive" | Late 2005 | |
6X DL "SuperDrive" | Late 2005 | |
6X DL "SuperDrive" | Late 2005 |
For the exact speed of each optical drive reading and writing different media, please refer to the specs page for the particular model of interest.
To upgrade or replace the optical drive in the Power Macintosh G5 models, site sponsor Other World Computing kindly provides a helpful video of the process:
In addition to upgrade videos, as you would expect, Other World Computing sells optical drives and other upgrades for the Power Macintosh G5.
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