External dvd burners

[CORRY20]

I am looking for a Dvd external burner to go with my aver Easy Dvd maker.Any suggestions.

[That_Kid]

I would suggest just getting a decent internal burner, such as a pioneer 105, 106 or a sony duel burner. Then get an external case to put it in and your good to go. Tried it out and it works great. Also alot cheaper. You can get one of the burners for $150 or less and the case for $30.

[Laddydaddy]

THAT_KID is right. You can get a Pioneer 106 internal drive and an external case to house it in for less than $200. If you wanted to go with an NEC burner you could shave about $40 off that price. That's less than you would pay for an external burner. It's less than some internal burners.

[CORRY20]

I only have a laptop.

[Laddydaddy]

But that's why you should buy a pioneer 106 or nec 1300 internal burner and then buy an external case to house it in. The external case turns the internal burner into an external burner which is just what you want The prices of the internal pioneer and nec burners coupled with the price of the external case is still cheaper than the price of an external burner.

[ofbarea]

If you use a laptop you will need an USB2 port or a firewire port. If your laptop does not have USB2 you should get a card with USB2, with firewire or a combo card with both ports. For I/O applications, firewire is faster especially when used against hard disks. (USB2 is theoretically faster but because its very high overhead, firewire is faster on real life situations).

A good option is to buy a USB2/firewire combo card. I really like Orange micro option (http://www.orangemicro.com/pccardcombo.html) because it will give 2 USB2 ports and 2 firewire ports.

If you decide to buy an external case for the DVD burner, get one with both USB2 and firewire interfaces. I'm using the case advertised in this link:
http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ME-320F

With a case like this I converted my HP DVD200i (internal) into a fast USB2/Firewire external DVD burner.

Good luck with your shopping.

[portrower8]

Is it possible to get an internal DVD burner, put it in an external enclosure with the Firewire 800 1394b and get fast/better results? I ask because I read your advice above -- and at the organge website it had Fireiwer 800 enclosures.

[The village idiot]

Firewire 800 will not hurt you, but I think firewire 400 is fast enough for 4x burns, and should be fast enough for 8x burns.

[ofbarea]

For current DVD burners firewire 800 will not make the burning process any faster. DVD burners are created using Ultra ATA-33 interface (33 MB/sec); firewire 400 (1394a) has an speed of 400 Mbit/s (50 MB/sec); firewire 800 (1394b) has an speed of 800 Mbit/s (100 MB/sec).

This means that unless DVD burners manufacturers start building drives that run at ATA-66 or ATA-100 you will not be able to benefit from the extra speed.

[dohmai]

hi i have the pioneer a05 dvdr and i've purchased an external enclosure
the bytecc me320 ... with only usb2.0 support becuz my laptop doesnt support firewire... the enclosure uses the ali 5621 chipset...

but i've been unable to burn dvds.. i can read/play dvds alright but cannot burn.. i have winxp sp1 so i assume i have the newest usb 2.0 drivers..

anhyone have any ideas? is the ali 5621 not compatible?

[Dennuz666]

I have a Sony DRX-510UL connected to the USB2 port and burns 4x no problems (i use my firewire for my Digicam). I really like this writer, bit expensive though.