advice/comments invited: CD/DVD RW drives in ext. enclosures

[Jake the Dog]

in the quest to keep my main PC safe from kiddie hads, I've bene thining about putting my CD & DVD RW drives into external USB2 enclosures and placing them on top of my desk. Firewire enclosures are an option but I prefer USB2 because A) they're cheaper and B) my BIOS supports USB CD devices.

in theory this setup should work just fine but I'm not convinced. should I expect that XP and apps like Nero, Alcohol 120% and DVDShrink can see, read and write to the drives just as if they were connected directly to IDE?

has anyone used a setup like this before or knows of one that works?

these are the enclosures I'm considering (from NewMotion):

 

[Mercutio]

My DVD Burners are all in external enclosures. I burn lots of DVDs and I've used every burning program I can find with no problem.

The one thing I will tell you is that every generic (not sealed) enclosure I've used has had a really crummy fan in it. The enclosures are frequently louder than the PCs I use them with.

 

[Jake the Dog]

thanks Merc. that's good to hear. are they USB2 or Firewire? I've read mixed reports about copying CD>CD over USB 1 or 2. some say it works, otyhers have problems with too much CPU utilisation.

I bought an external enclosure like the one above for my sister about 6 months ago. it's a Firewire unit and works seemingly well and yes, it's noisy. I have a bunch of b/b 40mm fans though which I might use to replace the noisy ones.

 

[Mercutio]

I have a nice mix of everything. Some USB2, some Firewire, some both. If you were in the US, I'd suggest looking at the ones that compgeeks.com carries, 'cause they're cheap and nicer than the "brand name" ADS kits I have.

It's frequently faster for me to move an entire hard disk than it is to xfer data over my network, so I tend to give the external drives I have a real workout.

 

[Jake the Dog]

what about CD/DVD > CD/DVD copying over USB2 or Firewire? have you done any of that and how did it go?

 

[Mercutio]

CD to CD works fine, even if they're both in USB2 enclosures.

 

[B4RSK]

First a disclaimer... I am openly biased agasint USB from the early days of USB hell...

Only one USB port on a notebook? Get a 4-port hub. Plug in the scanner, camera, mouse, and printer. Hmm, printer doesn't work. Unplug them all and try a different order. Everything works now... Reboot the computer. Nothing works... #@!$(&!@.... Unplug and try a different order... Camera doesn't work... #@$(&!!@$(.... Repeat over, and over, and oooooooover.

I don't know if USB2 is better about this or not, but in general computers have more ports now, so hubs are not so common.

Anyway, with regards to USB2, I have experience with my Libretto notebook (sub notebook, about 2 pounds / 1kg). It has USB 1.1 ports, so I bought an Adaptec CardBus USB2 PC Card. This is for use with a portable USB2 Plextor 24x10x24 CDRW drive. Burning CDs with this uses about 80% of the CPU!

OTOH, I have a Oxford 911 Firewire/IDE bridge setup that lets me use IDE drives on the notebook. Useful at client sites when consulting -- I can do virus scans or data recovery without having to lug a desktop along. Anyway, I have a no-name brand CardBus FireWire adapter. Cost 1/3rd the price of the Adaptec card. Bare PC Card in some bubble wrap, about 20bucks. Full speed read/writes use about 10% of the CPU. 8)

The Libretto uses an 800MHz Crusoe chip which definitely lacks power... It is probably about the speed of a P3-500. Even so, 80% CPU usage is very high.

YMMV of course, and desktop setups will have a lot more power than my tiny notebook.

Ian

 

[B4RSK]

Another big plus for Firewire is that it supports device chaining, just like SCSI. Just plug another device into the end of the chain and go.

Ian

 

[Mercutio]

As one of my engineer friends says, the problems USB has on Windows are largely the fault of Microsoft, not the USB spec. I'm inclined to believe him: neither Macs nor BSD machines seem to have any problems with USB devices.

 

[Fushigi]

If you were in the US, I'd suggest looking at the ones that compgeeks.com carries, 'cause they're cheap and nicer than the "brand name" ADS kits I have.

I have the ADS combo USB2/FW enclosure. It was a little more expensive locally at Microcenter vs. online, but I got it right away and the sales dude even checked their site to ensure large drive support. Works great under USB2 (my PC) and Firewire (my laptop) with a 160GB WD. No driver prompting or anything.

It's for 5.25" devices and has an adequate cooling fan. Audible, but not overpowering by any means.

USB2 definitely is faster than USB1.1. My desktop, USB2, was worlds faster than my laptop using USB1.1 (to the point of wondering if the USB1 transfer had hung...). Switching the laptop to Firewire leveled the playing field; without benchmarking I couldn't tell a performance difference between laptop & desktop.

 

[Pradeep]

I have two of the ADS Pyro enclosures, one is the original FW only version, and the other is the Duo (FW+USB). It seems to me that the Duo is a tad slower than the FW only version (when using Firewire).

Haven't tried it on USB2 tho (FW works fine for me). I also have a FW800 enclosure and controller, gives me about 50MB/sec running a WD 200JB (which is now in my ReplayTV).