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bobber205

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Nov 15, 2005
2,183
8
Oregon
What do you guys recommend for my MacBook. Even though I can use XP now with BootCamp ;), I would most like to use OS X to burn (partly because I only have the minimum 5 gigs on my windows partition).

Any recommendations?
 
The real cheaps ones won't last you a month. With DVD burners you need to think about RW and +/- capabilty too. HP makes some nice mid-market ones. I own one and love it.
 
Holy!

That's out of my budget range. I got the Superdrivelees MacBook saving me 150 dollars so I could get a cheaper external one.

That's WAY too much.
 
Understandable, but typically, a good external drive will run you more than an internal one of the same or better quality. This is because an external DVD writer is basically an internal drive with a box around it, plus a USB 2.0 bridge.

Although I'll admit the model I suggested isn't the cheapest you can purchase, you may have made the wrong decision about not getting the superdrive.

eBay?
 
You should be able to get a good drive for $30 to $35 shipped. Put it in an external enclosure, for what $25 too, and there you go.

Head on over to Newegg.com to get both. Look for their daily deals to get the drive. Then go for the enclosure and get the cheapest one that has a decent rating.
 
iDuck said:
The real cheaps ones won't last you a month. With DVD burners you need to think about RW and +/- capabilty too. HP makes some nice mid-market ones. I own one and love it.

Burners are only made by a few manufacturers (Pioneer, Plextor, Liteon, etc) and then rebadged for brands like HP. There aren't any cheap ones, just some OEM ones straight from the manufacturer and other ones wrapped up in pretty packaging by companies like HP and LaCie and sold for twice as much.
 
yg17 said:
Burners are only made by a few manufacturers (Pioneer, Plextor, Liteon, etc) and then rebadged for brands like HP. There aren't any cheap ones, just some OEM ones straight from the manufacturer and other ones wrapped up in pretty packaging by companies like HP and LaCie and sold for twice as much.
Well I suppose your right with that, but if you go to night market in Chinatown you can easily find defective hardware here anyways.

Thanks for the insight.
 
iDuck said:
Well I suppose your right with that, but if you go to night market in Chinatown you can easily find defective hardware here anyways.

Thanks for the insight.

Well, yeah, I think buying a DVD burner off a street in Chinatown is a bad idea is a given ;)

A burner from a store, such as NewEgg, should be fine.

Anyways, back to recommendations. I've got an OEM Pioneer dual layer burner in my G5 and it works great. I think the burner should be around 50 bucks now. Get that, get an external enclosure, probably about another 30, and there you go.
 
What kind of cord do I need (on average). I have a spare USB 2.0 cord laying around...
 
bobber205 said:
What kind of cord do I need (on average). I have a spare USB 2.0 cord laying around...
If you need a FW cable I have one for sale here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/198390/ that is if you get a case that has FW/usb 2.0, FW would be the better way to go ;) By the way LaCie had an external d2 FW dvd drive (DL, 16x and all the bells you could want yesterday for $79) however they come with really short FW cables (mine came with a 12 or 18" 6 to 6 pin) way to short for me unless your going to piggy back (aka daisy chain) a few HDD/DVD drives.
 
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