Internal vs external DVD burners?
January 26, 2005 6:32 PM   Subscribe

Any serious drawbacks to using an external DVD burner (as opposed to a regular, "internal" one) I should know of? [more inside]

I don't have a clue when it comes to external DVD burners.

Does a PC have to meet different requirements (from those of a regular bay recorder) to use an external recorder (apart from the need of a USB2.0/FireWire port)? Maybe the external recorder is more resource-hungry?

Are they more prone to writing errors? More easy to break?

These are the kind of questions that pop into my head right now, but I'm sure there's other stuff I can't think of.

If you could help me out, I'd appreciate it a lot.

PS: Suggestions for external/internal DVD burners (with a price consideration in mind) are most welcome! (My research for the latter says "LG 4163?", but then again I'm not an expert.) Thanks!
posted by kchristidis to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)
 
Best answer: Any serious drawbacks to using an external DVD burner (as opposed to a regular, "internal" one) I should know of?

Short answer: No

Slightly longer answer: They cost a bit more.

Slightly longer still answer: While theoretically the slightly higher resource requirements and slightly slower throughput could increase the chance of errors, in practice this just doesn't occur. This is because bad discs are nearly always caused by either defective media or not being able to read data off the hard drive fast enough, neither of which are related to whether the burner is internal or external.

Recommendation: NewEgg is an excellent place to shop for this kind of stuff. You may want to buy an internal drive and an external enclosure for it, as it will allow you to know exactly which drive mechanism you're getting and will probably be a bit cheaper to boot. I have a Lite-On 4x DVD burner that I've used both internally and in a Firewire enclosure with no problems either way.
posted by boaz at 7:06 PM on January 26, 2005


Oh yeah, and don't store your blank DVDs next to the radiator.[/learned the hard way]
posted by boaz at 7:07 PM on January 26, 2005


Best answer: External drives can hassle you with poor performance when they're not connected directly to your computer (i.e. through a poor-quality USB hub, which means most USB hubs that don't cost a fortune).

When I first got my DVD burner, I tried it as an internal IDE drive, external USB 2.0 and external FireWire... FireWire edged out the other two in terms of read (not burning) speeds, but only just slightly, and everything else turned out more or less equal. The only setup that hosed was when I pluged in an IDE-to-SATA converter, but no surprise there.

The external enclosures that pull double-duty USB/FireWire aren't too much more expensive and are way more versatile, which is a plus since DVD burners are still rare enough (among university students, at least) that you'll get plenty of requests for some portable DVD+/-RW action.
posted by onshi at 7:12 PM on January 26, 2005


At the office, I have a internal Pioneer DVD burner connected via usb in an ADS USB drive enclosure. It works very well.

I've had my eye on a Sony 16x external DVD burner for home. Based on this review from ExtremeTech, I may go for it and connect via an ADS box. Sony also has a true external version as well which I might opt for.
posted by dbh at 7:13 PM on January 26, 2005


Best answer: USB2.0 and Firewire are both just barely good enough to burn DVDs at 16x speed. It's quite a major accomplishment if someone has an external DVD writer that can burn a whole disc through at 16x with no buffer underruns. Burning at 8x and below should be just fine, and 8x really is fast enough unless you're *really* impatient. The newer Firewire 800 interface has no problem at the 16x speeds if you have the ports and can find an enclosure/external drive that supports it.

You may get a better deal either buying an internal drive and putting it an enclosure, or buying one already put together. There's really no difference, technically.
posted by zsazsa at 7:37 PM on January 26, 2005


As for suggestions for burners, ff you go the "buy a drive, then an enclosure" route, I recommend both NEC and Lite-On. The dual-layer Sony drives you can buy are just Lite-Ons with a fancy looking faceplate. As for enclosures, Firewire is the way to go if you have the ports. Try your hardest to find enclosures with an Oxford chipset -- just about everything else can be kind of flakey.
posted by zsazsa at 7:45 PM on January 26, 2005


Apart from a Sony drive that died, I've had an acceptable experience with my external. I like being able to hook it up to laptops, with a choice of USB 2.0 or Firewire.

My one caution, based on a gut feeling, is that for high throughput devices it's best to have your high speed ports built into the machine rather than PCI add ons. I had various strange problems with my installed Firewire/USB 2 cards (both "good" chipsets) until I swapped some stuff around to change the IRQ overlaps.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 8:30 PM on January 26, 2005


BTW, for blanks, pretty much every weekday dealnews does a roundup of the best DVD+-R media deals.
posted by boaz at 8:47 PM on January 26, 2005


I'd confirm what others have said. No problems and I went the buy internal drive, buy enclosure route. I went with a Pioneer as the region-free firmware update was easy to get. I've no idea who "really" makes it however.
posted by juiceCake at 5:46 AM on January 27, 2005


Response by poster: Thanks everyone, I knew I could count on you guys.

From what I've read here, I decided that going with an internal drive is the way to go. Should the need for transportability arises, I'll buy an Oxford-equipped enclosure.

Thanks again!
posted by kchristidis at 12:03 PM on January 27, 2005


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