external dvd-r

[Handruin]

Has anyone done any work with an external DVD-R drive for recording. Reason I'm asking is a friend was inquiring about buying an NEC 3520A and an external USB enclosure for his Dell Latitude D600 laptop. It lists having a USB 2.0 hub under computer manager. Do you think performance will be terrible or unacceptable given the config? I realize this isn’t the ideal solution for DVD recording, but given his config, do you think it is feasible? Tea/Tannin, don't you have a similar setup?

 

[freeborn]

I picked up a PIONEER DVR-108 and a ME320U2FB 300BK for my lab (and forays home) from newegg last september. I have yet to burn a dud DVD with it. At work everything is going through the USB 2 port on the enclosure and at home I'm using the firewire port. I primarily use it at work to backup important data to DVD. At home I use it for many things but I've burned numerous DVDs and CDs. I have yet to burn a dual layer with it but I assume that would work just as well

Free

 

[Pradeep]

Even burning at 16x should be within the limits of USB2, though FW would be a better option if he has a port on his laptop (less cpu util).

 

[Handruin]

I looked up the bandwidth of USB 2.0 and at 480Mb/sec it seemed like enough, but I wasn't sure if there was significant overhead. It sounds like a workable solution, but is there a decent amount of CPU usage for this type of I/O? Will the laptop's Pentium M 1.4 GHz cpu be enough?

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Pradeep]

That should be plenty. Keep in mind that burning a DVD is a DMA operation, so there is minimal CPU util.

Another more expensive option but one that would allow him to burn on the go would be this:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...=us&l=en&cs=04&category_id=2999&page=external