Need a new DVD burner, which one works best with OS X?

[gmacman]

I want to get a new DVD burner to use as an external and I have a couple of questions.

First, can I put the drive into a USB2 external enclosure or do/should I use FW?

And second which of the newer drives (18X or 20X DVD burning speed) work best with the Mac. I was looking at a Samsung model but on their website they say it only supports Windows. Does anyone know of a website that shows which DVD drives are supported on the Mac?

[Frobozz]

www.xlr8yourmac.com maintains a drive compatibility database where users post their experiences with different drives.

I prefer Firewire for Macs. I don't know if iDVD will see a DVD drive connected via USB2 but it shouldn't matter with other Mac burn tools either way.

Oftentimes the bridge used in the external case has a significant affect on the actual burn speeds. MacWorld compared several external drives more than a year ago and found that one in a LaCie case was faster than the same model drive in a different brand's case. It probably is true that you'll get what you pay for. I believe Plextor makes good external drives and cases along with LaCie. You know you won't actually see 18X or 20X burning of DVD media. Even if it is possible in their lab it only is attainable at the outer reaches of a disc. All drives burn at variable speeds with the inner part the slowest. Buffer Underrun prevention also slows down burn speed in favor of reducing the chance of making coasters.

Look for a drive from manufacturers who release firmware updates that can be flashed on a Mac (unless you have a PC handy).

[gmacman]

Frobozz-

Many thanks. Great advice, and yes I'm pretty familiar with the speed issues. In fact I really only like buring at 1X the problem I'm having now is that it's hard to come by 8X DVDs anymore and the higher speed rated media doesn't seem to work on my older burner (the iMac's oem drive). I've tried a bunch of different brands of 16X media and they all seem to fail to write.

And great point on the firmware issue. This built in drive does NOT have firmware update capabilities (which I think it crazy but evidently it doesn't).

[lawnman]

I get 8x -R Taiyo Yuden from SuperMediaStore all the time. I burn at 6x with them. Give them a try.

[Kryton]

Plextor has just announced a new USB/Firewire external drive (the 810 I believe) that should work with a mac.

Their drives are normally very good but I believe they don't make mac versions of their firmware utlities (I could be wrong on this as I haven't checked in a while) so you might need to hook it up to a PC for that.

[Mauserman]

I bought a "Optiarc NEC AD-5170A" a couple of month ago for my old G4 Quicksilver. It works just great, it was cheap too .

http://www.sonynec-optiarc.de/en/exhibits/hh-drives/ad-5170a.html