Need external dvd burner advice

I am looking for an external burner for a laptop, preferably one that can double as a dvd and cd burner (dvd+r at least). Main uses is to make back up of all my downloads and back up my games. What are some good burners? My friend keeps pointing at LaCie with Porsche, but I never even heard of this company.

 

I have a Sony External DVD burner 16X dual layer at work and a I/O Magic External 16 X dual layer at home (USB 2.0). They work well for data back up and making home movies. I cannot answer for backing up games since I don't play games. I use an external HD for backing up downloads.

They work well. However, 16X disks are cost prohibitive so I run 8x.

Dell Inspiron 6000
1.6 GHZ Centrino (Sonoma)
WUXGA 15.4" WS
512 MB RAM
60 GB HD
Wireless B/G
DVD/CD-RW
9 Cell Battery x 2
Mozilla Firefox Browser
Targus TL Deluxe Notebook Case
Targus Gravity Notebook Backpack
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Palmone Tungsten C/WIFI

 

LaCie DVD burners are very good; feature-wise, size, styling and price competitive. Check out their slim DVD burners, some laptops will even provide sufficient bus-power from their USB2 port for portability.

 

Lacie are good, but you will pay a premium for them. If portablity isn't a main concern then you may wanna consider getting a external 5.1/4" USB2 external casing which you can then put what ever desktop dvd burner you like into. I have a thermaltake case+pionner dvd burner, works great for all forms of backup. For game backups you will need a good imaging program like alcohol 120%. Hope this helps
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ASUS M6Ne 15.4" WSXGA 1.7 PM ATI9700 80Gb HDD 1Gb RAM

 

You could consider a slim one if you want it to be portable. They are slower than desktop drives, but much lighter. Lacies usually use NEC drives which are pretty good. If you laptop has firewire, I would get that. They seem more stable than usb.






I know things, things that could get me killed


Thinkpad T41:
* 1.6Ghz Pentium M * 768Mb Memory * 40Gb Hitachi 7200RPM * Panasonic UJ-845-B DVD+RW *

 

I'd go with a 5.25" drive and buy an external enclosure for it. I recommend the NEC 3520 drive. It's a 16X Dual Layer burner and they work great. I had an NEC ND2500A drive and burned about 600 DVD's with it and the only reason I had to get the new drive was because I jammed the tray one day and got the tray off it's track. They are a great drive. You can pick the drive up for under 60 dollars and then probably 40 or so for a good external enclosure.

X6000, 3.2 Ghz, 512meg ram, 256 ATI X600 video, 17" Brightview Screen, 60gig 7200rpm Hard Drive, 8X DVD Burner, 54g 802.11b/g WLAN w/ 125HSM/SpeedBooster

Upgrading from a Sager Celeron 500, 192meg ram, 6gig 4200 RPM Hard Drive, 8 meg ATI Rage LT Video Card, 15" Screen, 4X DVD player.

 

the only good burners are

Pioneer DVR-109
NEC 3520A
BenQ DW1620A DL

dont go outside these 3. if you can just buy the enclosure and buy the drive seperatly

-->Asus M6BNe | Pentium M 1.6GHz Dothan | 1024MB PC2700 Micron Ram | Radeon 9700 Pro 64MB | 80GB Samsung 5400 RPM 8MB Cache | Gigabit LAN | CDRW + DVD Combo |
-->Compal CL56 | Pentium M 1.6GHz Dothan | 1024MB Ram | Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB | 60GB HDD | 10/100 LAN | DVDRW |

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by pr5owner

 

Hi Goren,
What i did is tha i bought an old model USB2 CD-RW Burner from TEAC and then rip out the drive and put a new one Tosiba works perfekt for me, The CD burner can be found on differnt sales, I personally bought it for 25USD from Computer 2000 a German company, U can probably found something simillar over there where u live.
good luck

 

There are other good burners out there besides those. Sometimes at you can find good deals burners at Office Max/Office Depot. Office max had a Maddog external burner for $40 a few weeks ago after rebates of course. The drive was a rebadged NEC. If you do get a drive and case I would recommend firewire if you have the port. Sometimes usb cases don't play well with the drives. If you want more info on this I would head over to CDFreaks.com where you can find lots of info about drives and other things.






I know things, things that could get me killed


Thinkpad T41:
* 1.6Ghz Pentium M * 768Mb Memory * 40Gb Hitachi 7200RPM * Panasonic UJ-845-B DVD+RW *

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Robko