Originally Posted by
simongr
I am thinking of games that I generally install on the HDD but then require the CD/DVD to in the optical drive to run. Admittedly I have not explored how to avoid that previously - but that is the key circumstance when I would want to regularly be accessing an optical drive.
Ah. Well, that is something I am missing, then, because I don't play any games like that.
There should, however, be a way to avoid this. In the end, data is data. Seems like if the game comes on a DVD, perhaps they are doing this so that the game doesn't require a couple GB of disk space to install. If that's the only problem, it should be easily rectified by having a way to fully copy that game data onto a HDD. Even if the solution is to make a disk image file, it should be able to read from that just as easily as an optical disc. You should be able to make images of the CD/DVD yourself using Disk Utility.
If they are instead using this as some kind of copy protection, then you might be out of luck. But I think if you dig around online for info about this you would find some reasonable solutions.