I burnt out my usb ports on my macbook pro. . How can I connect usb devices

[Laura Cross]

I have a mid 2010 macbook pro 15 inch . A few years ago.. a guest I had over was going through my large stack of music cd's and for some unknown reason shoves 3 disc into the optical drive. So I had to take my mac apart, disconnect the drive and pull the case out with pliers . When I reconnected the drive it would scratch cd's really bad ruining them so I just quit using it. Well last year I needed to install software onto my mac so I found my old external optical drive and what I thought was it's power cord . I plugged the usb into a port on my mac and then I plugged the power into the drive and then into the outlet. The light on the drive started flashing and I began to smell something burning so I quickly unplugged everything. BUT when I tried to use the usb ports on my macbook nothing happens. Once in a while I will get 2 notifications on the top right corner of my mac saging to unplug a device from the usb ports because it was using toops much power in order to enable the ports. But nothing is plugged into them. My question is, is there and adaptor or connection I can get to be able to plug in my WD EXTERNALLY hard? drive

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

It sound to me like the USB ports may have been damaged by the external optical drive and its power supply, since USB will not supply enough power to burn up electronics in the way you described.

-Have you tried an SMC reset?
-Do other devices work with the USB ports - i.e. keyboard, mouse, etc.?

C

 

[BudVitoff]

Too little, too late, and probably not helpful in your case; nevertheless, there should be a pinhole in the optical drive case that -- with the help of a paper clip -- should/might pop the drive out for you. Of course, you knew this, tried it, and it didn't help.

 

[iMav]

Logic boards can be had for around $200 on ebay (and appear to be plentiful). Otherwise, perhaps it is time to look at something a bit newer.