External DvD Burners? Do you use one?

[Regal]

Hey all, I am about to get my Mac mini and I am in need of a external dvd burner. My LaCie just took a big crap on me and I went to my local compUSA and they do not carry them anymore. So I was looking around and found one my Iomega but it sucks. Other then that non of the other dvd burners there said they were Mac compatible. Can anyone help me out? I need to get one for sure at CompUSA only since I got a gift card. Thanks a mucho!!

[WiseWeasel]

If your Lacie is an external firewire optical drive, you can just get a regular IDE drive (I would suggest a Pioneer 108D for about $80 online) and swap it for the drive that's in the Lacie enclosure. As long as there's nothing wrong with the enclosure itself, it will work fine. That's exactly what I did, except it was just to upgrade from an external CD burner to a DVD burner. It will require opening the external enclosure, but it's very easy to do. It will be a lot cheaper than buying a whole external DVD burner setup. If it turns out that there is something wrong with the Lacie enclosure, you can always get yourself another enclosure without a drive for the Pioneer you bought, at a cost of around $40.

[Regal]

Hi Wise, Well my lacie was USB2.0, but I do not have that one at the momment. I exchaged it for the Iomega 16X super dvd writer. Oh and it sucks. It lack no power off switch and the burning software it come's w/ is a big Ol Stinker. God it is so awful. Makes me what to return it.

I am thinking about just getting gift card from compUSA and then getting a Firewire LaCie external burner from macZone or something like that. This just pisses me off.

[Regal]

Oh by anychace have you ever used the Charismac Discribe Software for Mac? Is it any good?? or is that burning software junk also?

[AlbcAlbrr]

I prefer the D2 line from Lacie - I have a nice stack of hd's, dvd, & cd burner. You can buy directly from Lacie, and they do have a "clearance section" so you can save some bucks that way. The products that show up there change from day to day so you have to keep an eye on it if you're looking for something specific. I have purchased several hd's (new) and a refurb'ed cd burner this way and haven't had a problem.

http://www.lacie.com/products/clearance/

[MerlinMacuser]

Santa brought me a Sony 710-UL DL burner for Christmas. It is not specifically tagged as for a Mac but I had zero problems with it...just plug and play using Toast. Beautiful and quiet too. Five Stars!

[Regal]

Merlin, that sounds awsome. I just purchased a LG GSA512OD.
I called LG and they told me that it will work w/ Mac's, but there is no software that they give with it. Oh well I have that software Charismac Discribe and a friend at work is going to hook me up w/ Roxio Toast. One of the main reasons why I got the LG is that it has both firewire or USB 2.0. ALso there are 2 firewire connections so maybe I can use 2 cables to both 1 for the Mac mini and my PC laptop and it would be a universal Dvd Burner between my two computers.

[Frobozz]

I bought a Firewire case from OtherWorld Computing and a Sony DVD burner a couple years ago. They've been great and it is easy to replace the Sony burner when I'm ready to upgrade. Today - if I didn't already have an external case - I'd probably buy a LaCie drive instead. I really like how that company is supporting the Mac platform and stand behind their products.

[WiseWeasel]

It's not a good idea to hook one FW peripheral to two computers. The two FW ports are there so you can daisy chain several peripherals without taking up extra ports on your computer. I'm just wondering what that I/O port is...
[Edit] Upon closer inspection, my guess is that it's a power switch and not an I/O port... [/Edit]

[AlbcAlbrr]

I'm just wondering what that I/O port is...

I don't think it's a port - I think it's the on/off switch.

[Riot Nrrrd]

I have a Pioneer DVD-108 in an external ADS FireWire 800 case.

Beware of having anything else on your FireWire bus with a FireWire DVD/CD burner - I burned several coasters before (by trial and error) I determined that having 2 other FireWire 800 disk enclosures on the same bus was giving Toast indigestion. Once I took the 2 RAID1 setups in the 2 enclosures off of the bus (I made my DVD burning staging area on a FireWire 400 bus disk instead), I started getting good burns. Today I had a mismatch in the Verify pass on a burn, but it still looks good on the TV, so I dunno what happened with the Verify ... all my other burns (with the DVD-108 being the only thing on the bus) have burned fine.

FireWire and Macs just don't play well in the sandbox together. It's a combination that is far, far too frail ...

[Regal]

Hi Wise. Yes that i/o is a power off/on switch. Which I think in all external burners need. My Iomega that I just had did not have a on off switch what a POS. But I made sure that , that i/o is a power sitch, I got a better look

[Regal]

FireWire and Macs just don't play well in the sandbox together. It's a combination that is far, far too frail ...

How about using USB then and not firewire?

[WiseWeasel]

I've never had any problems with FireWire devices, and I have 6 of them hooked up to my G5 tower at the moment (1 DVD-RW, 4 HDs and a Canopus ADVC100 analog to DV bridge). The only problem I ever had with FW devices was when I has a piece of crap Dazzle Hollywood analog to DV bridge that like to fry FW ports.

[Riot Nrrrd]

I can't speak to using USB 2.0, because my home machine is a 17" PowerBook G4 1 GHz and I'm pretty sure that the 2 USB ports on it are both USB 1.0. As a result, all of my external FireWire cases are FireWire-only ...

[MerlinMacuser]

Merlin, that sounds awsome. I just purchased a LG GSA512OD.
One of the main reasons why I got the LG is that it has both firewire or USB 2.0. ALso there are 2 firewire connections so maybe I can use 2 cables to both 1 for the Mac mini and my PC laptop and it would be a universal Dvd Burner between my two computers.

Yes, the Sony will work with the Mac in OSX too without any additional drivers. Toast can see it. The Sony also has both USB2 (I don't use) and FW ports. I have the Sony at the close end of the FW chain and a Mercury (OWC-Teac) high speed cd burner chained to it. Have not had any problems.

Don't use both FW ports at the same time. You may want to network the computers together but not through the FW ports.

Get PatchBurn III which puts two tiny little files in your OSX home folder (the one with your name on it) and allows you to use your external burner from the desktop.

Dual layer blanks are still more expensive than pre-viewed commercial versions of the stuff I like so I have not yet tried backing up to a DL disk.

[vinyl.dj]

err buy your mac mini with a slotloading superdrive in it if CompUSA sell the macmini with a superdrive - if they do not and this is why u want external or a DL burner then go for the external:

LaCie d2 DVD±RW (USB or Firewire) with LightScribe and Toast 6 (label your discs in the burner ) $199, not available yet (February) so CompUSA won't have it - but this is the burner I'm waiting for.

[reloc]

Is there a particular brand I should get for best compatibility with my iMac G3 or are they pretty much all the same? I was thinking of the LaCie d2 but I saw in the specs that they say it requires a G4. Is that just bs? Where might I find the lowest prices?

Thanks for any help.

[sjk]

... and a friend at work is going to hook me up w/ Roxio Toast.

Toast is a commercial product.

[Regal]

The LG I got (above) works really well. Very fast burn on Firewire. I am happy w/ the burn time results.

8x TY dvd+r's burn at 12X w/ no underrun.
Perfect burn. I clap.