If I remove my internal optical drive from my 2012 MacBook pro, will an external superdrive work? My internal optical drive is not working despite attempts to clean it. I have an external USB Superdrive but it will not work with my MacBook Pro since it has the internal optical drive. If I just remove the internal drive, will my MacBook Pro recognize (and work properly with) the superdrive. I primarily use the superdrive to copy audiobooks from CDs into my computer.
You can install multiple external USB optical disks if you want, the tricky part is being able to have macOS / OSX identify it distinctly from the internal one when it comes to operations such as ejecting.

I've had two DVD-ROMs installed on a Mac Pro tower in the past and the only difficulty was in regards to the keyboard's eject button. If there is only one optical drive in the machine, there is no confusion. However, with a second drive you have to press Option-Eject or click on the "Eject Icon" on the menu bar and select which one you want to work with. Of course, you can disconnect the original drive and then the confusion by the OS will go away.

FWIW, I've found that the Apple branded external SuperDrive is overpriced and doesn't offer any advantage over other USB-driven optical drives. From my personal experience, the "Amazon Basics" drive performs just as well for about half the cost. Despite that one no longer being available, I can't imagine that it would be any more/less compatible than the others you can find online for even cheaper.