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External DVD Burner?

G

gnortenjones

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 16, 2008
122
2
I bought my first mac (24" aluminum iMac) a few months back. I love the computer except for one thing... the superdrive. The 8x burn speed just isn't doing it for me.

Does anyone have any experience with using an external burner? The one I'm looking at right now is here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827248007

The 20x burn speed looks impressive, but can the USB2 connection keep up with that kind of burn speed?

Thanks.
 
The only way I know how to look at this is to compare throughputs. USB 2.0 will be 480 Mb/sec, or 60 MB/sec. The 20x DVD actually means 27 MB/s. (taken from these specs for a different drive).

So yes, USB2 should have the throughput for 20X burning. It sorta makes sense too - it wouldn't make much sense for them to sell a 20X burner with a connector that couldn't support that throughput.

If you burn DVDs a lot, $57 is not a bad price to get 20x instead of 8x. For me, I only burn a disc every few weeks, and most of them only have a few minutes of video on them, so the burn speed is inconsequential. I suspect most folks out there are like me. For those who burn a lot, it's external for faster speeds with an iMac.
 
I bought a BYTECC ME-340U2F-BK USB 2.0/Firewire enclosure from Newegg and an NEC 16x ND-3540A DVD burner back in the summer of 2005 and it works fine on my 24" mid-2007 iMac

Enclosure:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145360

Drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827152047

I was drawn to this particular enclosure because the power supply was internal to the enclosure - just uses a standard PC power cord. One less thing to carry around as I move it between computers and take it places.
 
djc6 said:
I bought a BYTECC ME-340U2F-BK USB 2.0/Firewire enclosure from Newegg and an NEC 16x ND-3540A DVD burner back in the summer of 2005 and it works fine on my 24" mid-2007 iMac

Enclosure:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145360

Drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827152047

I was drawn to this particular enclosure because the power supply was internal to the enclosure - just uses a standard PC power cord. One less thing to carry around as I move it between computers and take it places.
Click to expand...

i got the exact same thing same company different case for only 40$ on ebay
 
Will that work on OS X ? I have been having a lot of trouble with my slot drive on the Imac that I am thinking of an exteranl drive myself

gnortenjones said:
I bought my first mac (24" aluminum iMac) a few months back. I love the computer except for one thing... the superdrive. The 8x burn speed just isn't doing it for me.

Does anyone have any experience with using an external burner? The one I'm looking at right now is here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827248007

The 20x burn speed looks impressive, but can the USB2 connection keep up with that kind of burn speed?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
 
Sony on Firewire

I use an external Sony via Firewire because some of my older disks and even purchased disks read better off of it. It burns an reads just fine and is more accessible then the iMac's drive. I don't care so much about speed as accessibility.
 
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