Help with choosing a DVD writer...

[MechanizedDeath]

I'm planning on adding a DVD writer to my system within the next few months, and I'm sort of looking for something specific:

1. I've seen some drives on the market that appear to use a DVD within a cartridge, similar or identical to the old CD caddies. My first CD burner used these caddies, and I've got dozens of them laying around. I always liked them because they protected my discs and I'm admittedly careless with my recordable media. Are these caddies the same as the old CD caddies?

2. Even if the caddies are different, I'd preferably like to get one of these caddy drives. I'm aware that there are multiple recording formats out there, but there are more and more drives that do most or all of the formats. So, of course I'd prefer a caddy drive that does all the formats.

3. I'm somewhat "old-school" and prefer a SCSI interface, but I'm seeing less and less SCSI stuff on the market, and most of the SCSI stuff I see these days is strictly high-end, commercial stuff that I can't afford. Given that, I'm not expecting to find an affordable, caddy loading SCSI drive, but there's always hope I guess.

4. One of the reasons I like SCSI is the ability to go external or internal. My first burner was an external SCSI unit, and I took it everywhere with me. I'd like to be able to do that again, so any external unit is a plus. I also know there are enclosures to convert an IDE drive to USB 2.0 or Firewire, so those would be a fallback option.

To summarize, I guess what I'm looking for (in addition to the obvious combination of low cost and decent quality) is a caddy/cartridge loading, multiformat, external or SCSI interface writer. With that said, can anyone suggest a writer that I might want to take a look at? Thanks!

[jgandara]

One of the reasons I like SCSI is the ability to go external or internal

I don't think and IDE is that different than a SCSI drive. Altough you can get a better IDE drive than a SCSI. You have more external/internal options with IDE drives, and for a fraction of the cost of a SCSI drive. The justification of an external SCSI drive was because parallel ports and serial ports couldn't provide enough transfer rate to burn a CD. USB changed that for ext. CD writers; now firewire/USB 2.0 did that for external DVD writers

Second, with USB 2.0 and Firewire, an IDE drive makes more sense. You can buy an internal drive and an enclosure (got one on ebay for $32, shipping included) and make an external drive. I don't see the reason for a SCSI, most computers nowdays have at least USB,and they will have in the future USB 2.0 and/or firewire.

I think SCSI it's becoming obsolete, it was used before because of faster transfer ratios. Now USB 2.0 and SATA can compete with SCSI performance, and for price, they outperform SCSI.

I haven't seen a caddy drive in a long time. I think Apple used them and some SCSI drives. Those are gone because they are not practical. You have to move on, what it's very good HW today, in a couple of years it will be obsolete; don't stick to old technology.