Internal Burner Made External?

[LighthouseJ]

I have a DRU-500A and I love it. However, I might be switching to a laptop and I can't quite fit the 500A into it. Is there some product out there that I can put my 500A into it and connect it to my laptop via USB 2.0 or Firewire and use it on there just as I would if it were in my desktop? I have a friend that has this hot-swappable setup for his hard drives and I thought someone may have made this item too.

[jeex]

you need a drive enclosure.

cooldrives.com

[LighthouseJ]

good call, the USB 2.0 + Firewire enclosure for $70 looks appealing, might have to use that.

[dcsos]

USE FIREWIRE for BURNING

USB 2.0 is good enough for capturing only

also USB is one device per port
Firewire is daisy chainable
(NO HUBS NEEDED)
http://store.acoolfan.com/usbexen.html
$65.00

[Poppa_Meth]

does that enclosure work well for capturing to a HD set in it as well? I've had a hell of a time trying to find an enclosure with decent reviews. they all seem to have problems. I'll be using firewire.

[LighthouseJ]

good call dcsos too, that enclosure also looks like the DRU-500A unit with the aluminum look.

To anyone that has used an enclosure with a DRU drive: If I connect it with firewire, will XP Home say "hey, a DVD recorder just connected and it's ready to be used" and Nero 6 can use it fine?

[dcsos]

Papameth: Thats what I have in the enclosure I showed rite now--- a HARD DRIVE... captures under 2000 and XP just fine.. Some problems loading the USB driver for WIN98 with this box..but the firewire was a charmer under all OS'ES

To LIGHTHOUSE..YOU will have the experience you described above..

JUST DON'T OPEN NERO BEFORE you add the drive to the system (or have it there from boot up) because if you add it while nERO's alredy open, IT WILL NOT UPDATE iTS LIST OF USABLE RECORDERS CONNECTED

[LighthouseJ]

So, let me get this straight... I plug the external burner into the firewire port, Windows XP says "a mass storage device is connected and is ready to use". I can open Nero and it automatically selects the DRU-500A as my drive to burn with and it works just as if it was inside the computer?

Forgive my redundancy but I've never owned a laptop, USB or Firewire device so this is all new to me. I know how it works in theory, I just don't want to get stuck with problems.

[dcsos]

Yes

Thats it!

There is a "RE-SCAN BUSES" if you forget or have NERO open when you connect the drive!

[jgandara]

dcsos,
I think USB is as good as firewire, according to this article where they compare 2 external HD, the only advantage firewire has is real time transfer data, that is when capturing video; also cascade connection is possible with firewire without a hub.

for burning it shouldn't make any difference which one you choose, it's a matter of compatibility. Usually for windows, you will find more USB peripherals. Get whatever if cheaper.

Also check the transfer rates:
Max. Burst Transfer Rate

USB 1.1->12 Mb/s
USB 2.0-> 480 Mb/s
FireWire 1394a-> 400 Mb/s
FireWire 1394b ->800 Mb/s (I haven't heard of this one, but looks very good)

http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20020827/mobile_data-01.html

[dcsos]

Something about the way USB talks to devices makes it unsuable for VIDEO unless you are willing to take a few weeks to eliminate all the little conflicts on your USB buss

I'm not saying it doesn't work, I'm just going by the many usesrs frustrated on this site trying either to capture VIDEO over USB or to BURN DVD's over USB

These seem to be the big non-nos.. unless you are at least an A-1 tech or...you bought a machine built to do this out-of-the-box

look at the facts also.USB is great for printers mouse keyboard etc...and did you know If you plug one of these into u your USB21 it slow the whole thing down to USB 1?? then you cant do either task above at all!

FIRE WIRE 2 is really the way to go I have an ORANGE MICRO 1394b board that goes in a PCI slot (but has extra pins hanging out till the 64BIT PCI slots come out next year).. Firewire, when you add a peripheral , it adds a port...When you adda a USB device..you have to go out and buy a HUB so USB ends up being more expensive (the hub is like a having to buy with a REBATE..it sucks)

Plus.. FIREWIRE will network 2 computers with a cable (no ethernet card needed!).. Just be careful..as any HARD DRIVE attached will go with the macine 1st booted (If you have a peripheral in betwween the machines)

[draganong]

I have bunch of USB2 external devices (HHDs, DVDRWs, etc). I can read and burn just fine DVDRs.

You can get an external USB2 enclosure for about $36, or a 2.5" one for about $18. Check pricewatch.

/draganong

[LighthouseJ]

Thanks for confirming dcsos, I'm looking over Pricewatch now for good enclosures for it now.

[jgandara]

I have no problems using external usb 2.0. I haven't seen a device that captures on a USB 2.0 connection.

I'm not saying it doesn't work, I'm just going by the many usesrs frustrated on this site trying either to capture VIDEO over USB or to BURN DVD's over USB

If people is having problems maybe their system is not capable of doing that or maybe they don't have USB 2.0 ports, maybe they are using usb 1.1 ports instead. Again, USB 2.0 is 20% faster than firewire.

You also need a good computer to capture video and burn DVD's, no matter if you use FW or USB. Remember we are talking about USB 2.0, no 1.1. Most mouse, keyboards are 1.1, no USB 2.0.

and did you know If you plug one of these into u your USB21 it slow the whole thing down to USB 1?? then you cant do either task above at all!

Do you know what backwards compatibility means? It happens the same with EIDE drives, if you connect a slower HD with a faster drive, the overall speed is reduced to the slower one. That's something related to compatibility, and it's not a USB issue. Just wait until firewire 2 comes out and it'll work the same way.

Firewire, when you add a peripheral , it adds a port...

That's not always true, that it's possible only if the peripheral has a port you can connect on, to do cascade connections. You can also have cascade connections between usb devices.

I think either one is good enough, as I stated before, firewire is better for video capture, but you can also do it with USB 2.0 (not 1.1).

USB 2.0 is cheaper than firewire and it's more compatible with windows. Also it's backwards compatible with USB 1.1, but don't expect to be able to burn DVD on USB 1.1 (You can burn CD's only)

I think you talk out of ignorance. If people has problems there must be a cause: bad memory, slow computer, outdated drivers, fragmented HD, faulty card.

If you look on any store and look for external burners, I bet you will find more USB 2.0 drives than firewire. Why? Compatibility, reliability, performance and because USB is more common among all windows plataforms; firewire is a port created for MACs and ported to PCs.

I got a case 5.25" for 32 on ebay. You can also get firewire+USB 2.0 for a little bit more, but you have the best of both worlds.
[/b]

[TBoneit]

I've used the readily available USB 2.0 ME320 series external boxes, also available in usb 1.1 or firewire, To burn DVDs @ 4X, CDs and to hold Drives. No coasters either But then I do run near state of the art system. Always upgrading.

The latest box has a sticker trumpeting supports Hds up to 320GB on it. The older ones do not say that. they may or may not. There may or may not be a difference. But what the heck get thje latest one when buying, right?

And yes I have Firewire too for my ADVC-100 to connect to. But the USB box was cheaper.

You'll be more likely to find USB 1.2 or 2.0 than fireaire unless you bought Sony or MAC computers.

Cheers
Roger

[snafu099]

Have an AND 1.2 mhz system to which I added pci usb2 card. Use ADS usb2 IDVD2 external capture device, capturing to a 120g hdd in a external usb2 incloser ($30) then burn with nec 1300a dual format also in usb2 incloser (same brand). All on and running with no problems

data transfer rate is higher with usb than when devices mounted internally

[handyguy]

Or call computergeeks.com they have cases for everything under the sun.

[Vanderlow]

I like USB 2.0 for compatability reasons. You ever plan on loaning out your burner most people won't have firewire, but they will more likely have USB 2.0.

[LighthouseJ]

Yeah, I'll probably get the USB and Firewire enclosures, that looks best for what I'm looking for.

[ofbarea]

I would like to comment that even though USB2 has a faster maximum bandwidth, it also has a protocol with a large overhead. On the other hand, firewire has a more efficient protocol, and more bandwidth for real life data transfers. According to some people, only up to 70% of USB bandwidth is available in general.

I have done some testing in this matter and I got better disk bandwidth through the firewire port than through the USB2 port.

The test was done with TI and Lucent based firewire ports. The USB2 port had a NEC chipset.

The machine was a P4 1.8 with 768 MB RAM, WXP SP1.

The case was a dual firewire/usb2 case. The firewire part was oxford 911. I do not recall the make if the USB2 portion.

I also recall that if I was using my USB2 HD and I plug in my USB2 scanner, the maximum throughput decreased.

[lechtin]

Firewire does give a better throughput than USB2.0 as proven by Tom's Hardware in every single test they ever ran comparing the 2. As for burning, if you are using a burner with a buffer underrun protection of some kind, you'll be ok. The burning will just be slower depending on the system being used. Case in point:I ghosted my laptop (PII 300MHz, 6GB HDD 4200 RPM, USB 1.1) to my DRU500A enclosed in a usb/firewire ADS enclosure. Just took longer than usual to fill the CD-Rs.

[Alexz]

Just want to point out that firewire gives better speed due to different architecture solution: Peer-to-peer works faster than usb's master-slave, and the computer doesn't have to control the data flow.
The theoretical maximum speed is never riched. The real speed is lower than 400 Mbps for both, usb and firewire.

[jgandara]

Check this article:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/usb20vsfirewire/

This is the conclusion:

Although the USB 2.0 is speedier than the FireWire, the latter beats it when used in high-speed storage devices. Probably, future products will unveil and use the full potential of the USB 2.0 bus. If we take only the storage devices sphere, the optimal solution would be a combo USB 2.0/FireWire -IDE bridge. In this case a user would get the maximum flexibility when choosing the ways of connection of data storage devices.

Firewire can be faster than USB from a few seconds to minutes, depending the OS and amount of data to transfer. I think for burning data,it shouldn't make a difference. So if you are going for a firewire+USB 2.0 case, he's doing a very good choice, you have compatibility in all cases.

[Vanderlow]

But how much bandwith would a theortical 16x burner need? If its below 70% of USB 2.0 its a non-issue.

[tomahan]

Just to put in my two cents, I'm one of the frustrated USB 2.0 burner users that dcsos refers to in his 12/1 note. I had my LG 4040B in a ME-320U enclosure. I could burn +R +RW, but not -R. I finally pulled the drive out of the enclosure and made it an internal drive by swapping it with my DVD-ROM. My system likes that configuration much better. Haven't had any more problems burning -Rs. Might be a faulty enclosure, might be the USB 2.0 bus, I don't know. My system is two years old, and I had to add a USB 2.0 VIA PCI card, as 2.0 wasn't built in.

[pharlap]

if you have problems wth usb 2 under xp install winxp sp1 and then go and get the extra patch from Bill -make sure u uninstall the other manufacturer drivers first and u won't have any problems

[dcsos]

Firewire, when you add a peripheral , it adds a port...

That's not always true, that it's possible only if the peripheral has a port you can connect on, to do cascade connections. You can also have cascade connections between usb devices.

Thats plain wrong..
LIKE I SAID...add a FIREWIRE PERIPHERAL...add a new port

USB was screwed in design by the PORT CONCEPT each time you add a USB peripheral, you close a PORT!!
This makes the USB system (1 or 2- who cares)...a less useful choice..

LIKE I SAY USB may look cheaper..but in the long run
your FIREWIRE IS MUCH better value because you needen't buy HUBS!!!

Also, FIRWIRE 2 out already, is way faster..
I'm not saying get 2 unless you need it..but USB2 performs much worse than firewire 400 anyway!

Like I said USB is for Keyboard and mouse (ok.. and maybe one harddrive you hadda connect this way)