portable DVD ROM??

I have some old CD /DVD that I want to read them , not necessarily need to write anything to a new DVD
. Because my laptop computer has no internal DVD drive.

Any advice on what to buy? What is usually the difference between a cheaper one and a more expensive one??

Thank YOu so much !!!!

 

Is there a lot of difference in price? I would personally get a DVD burner as it's more likely to be recent technology and capable of running happily on the power from a single USB port whereas read-only drive might be old hardware and needs power from two USB ports (there used to be special cables for this). Also, one never knows when it would be useful to burn a disk. Liteon make good optical drives and may be slightly cheaper than the better known brands.

John

 

Where are you located at this will help others give you better direction.

 

Hello !
Would my laptop generate enough power to the portable DVD burner to work?
Or Do I have to pay attention to that if the portable DVD burner drives too much power through the USB ports and cause too much heat to the internal of my laptop?

I had experience working with a DVD burner it's very noisy when working, I'm worried if it would generate too much power , and thus too much heat to my laptop....

In that case, I would rather give up reading my old DVD, my laptop is more important......

 

Modern slim DVD burners use relatively little power. The slim portable burners normally use 9.5mm drives which were originally designed for internal use in notebooks so power efficiency was a consideration. I've just run a quick test of a Liteon ES1 burner by watching battery drain while loading and playing CD. Loading or ejecting a disc causes brief power spikes of about 8W (not quite within the rating of 5V 1.5A given on the label) but the power drain was 2 to 3W once the disc was spinning. It's a distinct improvement over my first optical drive nearly 25 years ago which was a bit of lump and had a heavy power supply.

John

 

Do you recommend this?

https://www.amazon.com/LG-Electroni...24517880&sr=1-4&keywords=portable+DVD+PC&th=1

or LiteON?

 

Either is fine. I've used both brands without problems.

John

 

In a conclusion, Do you mean that , most of the portable DVD drive no matter they are only reader or burner , the power generated is well under the safe value so it will not cause heat problem to laptops? thank you ! sorry too many questions!!

 

Do not worry about any extra heat. The power needed by the USB device is supplied by the PSU (or battery if running on battery) and the only extra heat would be that generated by converting this power to the 5V used by the USB device. That might be around 0.5W to 1W, which is insignificant compared with the heat generated by the CPU when under load (15W upwards depending on the CPU).

John

 

I don't have technical knowledge about physics and electric but my experience is from time to time I can feel (with my bare hand) that the USB cable (near the port end) is getting "quite" hot when a USB device is working. That's why I am concerned.

 

Does the cable warm up when not connected to a USB device? If so, it's conducting some heat out of the computer. I find it difficult to believe that the power going through the cable is sufficient to cause it to heat up unless there's a damaged part close to the port where it's capacity is limited. Try a different cable.

John

 

I didn't try if the cable warmed up when not connected to a USB device,
but when it was connected to the device and the device is working, I can feel
some "uncomfortable" heat, which means I don't know if it's too hot or not but I hope" it shouldn't be that hot.

Thank You very much. I will purchase a LG or LiteOn portable DVD on Amazon

 

It's best to try leaving the cable plugged in to the notebook, with the other end unplugged as John suggested. Most likely it will still warm up, showing that the port you're using is simply conducting heat from inside your notebook and that there's no abnormal power draw or resistance in the cable. This is not unheard of if the port is close to exhaust ventilation or if your notebook's case is made of metal and gets hot in this area. If, on the hand, it remains cool when no external device is connected to the cable, that's sign of an electrical flaw that could cause severe damage. No need to panic, as that's unlikely, but perform the test to be sure.

 

I've already purchased a LG portable drive on Amazon, not yet arriving here because it's international shipment.

But I just found out in its description that "Tipo de Interface: USB 2.0. NOTE: This is a DVD writer, NOT a DVD player."


Isn't all DVD writer also a player?? Does it mean it can only write data to discs but unable to read the files or data or playback the discs??

full name of my product"------ LG Electronics GP50NB40 8X USB 2.0 Slim Portable DVD Rewriter External Drive with M-DISC Support, Black


By the way, what is M- Disc ?? I never heard of that

 

DVD writers are also DVD readers. It seems the seller has written a confusing or otherwise incorrect description for the product.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

Summarized, it’s a type of DVD/BR meant for long-term archiving.

 

what is long term archiving?

Still anybody nowadays archiving files with optical discs????

What's the advantages? keeping it for a longer time? I believe optical discs have longer lifespan than a hard drive, in my experience

Why not using portable hard drives for backup or cloud?

Thank you for answering

 

1) Exactly what it sounds like.

2) Yep. You'd probably also be surprised that people still use magnetic tape as well (which is even better, in terms of costs and longevity)

3) Advantages of M-Disc? I don't know, since I don't use it and am not interested in optical media. That said, a common problem with optical disks is disc rot, so you have to be careful when storing them for long periods of time; I'd rather have hard drives or even better, tape.

4) Optical discs and hard drives / cloud are not mutually exclusive. People can use both.