My 1 year old Dell is no longer burning DVD's for me. I shoot weddings and make extensive use of the burner for backing up the images and giving the images/slideshows to the clients. My CD/DVD drive can read disks, but will not complete a burn... Error message 9 times out of ten so it's looking like one of the lasers is going bad.
So I'm looking for a recommendation on an external CD/DVD/Bluray burner. It doesnt have to be Bluray but I figured it couldnt hurt to get on board... Is there a manufacturer I should stay away from or looking into more? Thanks in advance.
Frank,
My latest computer build is a custom water cooled case with no allotment for DVD drives, so I run them externally.
My solution was simply to put an internal DVD drive into an external enclosure. Since I'm only burning DVDs, USB2 interface was good enough for me. I've used them both on my desktop box and laptops abroad.
To do this is to buy whatever drive you want (as an internal variant), and then an external enclosure with whatever interface (to computer) that you want. If you can handle a screwdriver, then you'd be able to assemble it.
The nice thing about 'making' your own, is that you save the money that some other company is charging you for the 5 minutes of assembly and you know what drive went in there - as opposed to unknown internals.
If buying a full external drive kit, the type that I would steer away from are the slimline ultra portable drives. They need bus power from the USB ports (multiple ports sometimes) and generally burn alot slower than full sized drives (hence the reason I take my external burners to use with my laptop many times).
As for brand (of internal drives), I also own 36 DVD duplication towers with 11 drives each (nearly 400 drives). I built them myself also, but they use Pioneer drives - as do my desktop burners. I've had great luck with them over the past 4 years. The main use for them is to burn ~25,000 copies of discs in a single weekend, but we also use a few towers in the office year round for another 25,000+ discs. We have had some drives fail - usually the master reading drive (which is used most often), but I'd say the drive failure rate is about 10 drives over 4 years (out of 400).
There may be other great brands out there, I've only had experience with Pioneer.
There are a few external burner options that now include esata and USB3. I just picked up a USB3 external Blu Ray burner DVD/CD (backwards compatible USB2) to replace my ailing internal BluRay burner. The additional speed of USB3/esata is a nice option over USB2, particularly with BluRay.
