No internal DVD drive?

[Jaceson]

I'm building a new PC and I'm considering forgoing installation of an internal DVD/CD drive in favor of an external USB drive. This is of course an attempt to avoid having to unplug or deactivate any IDE drives from my system to bypass all these wonderful copy protection schemes. I'm just wondering if anyone else has taken this route and what success you've met with. Recommendations for good external drives would also be helpful.

Thanks,

J

[Jito463]

I've currently got two external USB DVD±RW drives, and absolutely no internal optical drives whatsoever. I haven't had any problems with it. The only issue is if I use a bootable CD or DVD with a linux bootloader (like CDSH for example). It doesn't like to load properly. This sometimes causes me issues if I need to test or use my TechDVD on my own system. Or another example, I have a DVD that has both x86 and x64 versions of Vista combined onto one DVD, and it doesn't like to start right from an external (or sometimes even a SATA drive). But that's rare, and a minor problem at that.

[Jaceson]

External Drive suggestions

So guys, any suggestions for a good external drive? Do they generally rip as well as their internal counterparts?

[DarthTyranus]

So guys, any suggestions for a good external drive? Do they generally rip as well as their internal counterparts?

External drives are merely normal drives (mostly IDE) placed inside a USB case. Thats it. There's nothing "special" about them because they are "external"
If the drive inside is a good internal drive, then it will rip good, if its a crappy one, it will rip poorly.
In fact, if you want to save money and get a good quality drive, you can buy your favoriate internal drive (like a good DVD burner) and put it inside a $15 USB external case.
There are cases that use Firewire, or eSATA (if the drive is a SATA drive), or all the above, depending on how you want to do it.
My personal experiance is with using USB 2.0 with drives (cd drives, dvd drives, hard drives, etc), and I've never had a failure on burning due to using USB instead of IDE.

For me, personally, I leave my internal drive dvd drive inside my computer case, and I bought a IDE to USB adapter. I have the drive plugged into the adapter, and have that plugged into an internal USB header on my motherboard.
So I dont have to bother with any external stuff, its all inside my computer case, and yet its USB and not IDE In fact, I have no IDE drives in my computer, all hdds are SATA, and my DVD drive is connected with USB.
If you don't have or don't know how to connect it with USB header, you can always bring the USB cable from the drive out through an expansion slot and plug it into a rear USB port on your computer.

Here's an example of a USB to IDE adapter, this one does laptop IDE drives too which is also useful if you ever want to take out your laptop drive and do stuff to it when its hooked to another computer, like backup the drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812119017

Here's an example of a USB IDE case that can do 5.25" drives (like DVD)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817186103

I have no idea about those particular products if they are good, they are just random examples, I wanted to show you what such products might look like.


BTW, another possability if your goal is to avoid IDE, is using a SATA dvd drive, they are starting to become more popular. It will depend if your motherboard can support SATA of course.
Here's an example of a 20x SATA dvd burner:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?ATT=27151153&CMP=AFC-SlickDeals&Item=N82E16827151153

Its only $31 USD, and I hear that the samsung 20x SATA is a decent drive.

If you are in USA, newegg is a pretty decent place to buy from, but there are many other places, possibly with lower prices, so its a good idea to shop around if you want the best deal.

[DarthTyranus]

I must be blind, because suddenly I can't find the edit button to edit my previous post (even though I edited it just a few mins ago).

Anyway, if you are into the real technical details, here's the thread at CDfreaks about the 20x SATA samsung burner:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=220466&page=16&pp=25

Edit: and now the edit button is showing for this post and not the previous...

[Jito463]

You can't edit a post after 20 minutes (or 30 minutes, something like that).