need an ATA DVD burner

[Howell]

So I need an ATA DVD burner to drop into my external USB case and I have not been keeping up with all of the acronyms. Will just anything do or are there some gotchas?
This would just be for burning ISOs and such, nothing archival, so I'd like maximum compatibility (within reason) and to keep costs down.

 

[ddrueding]

Shame you are so far away, I have a stack of them sitting here. I don't pay attention to brands or performance, they all seem to do what I need.

 

[paugie]

The last good burner I bought was a NEC. 3 years ago. still burning well, though I once opened it up to clean the lens.

Then I bought Sony thinking its partnership with NEC would make it good. Nope. 3 replacements (heard other horror stories from other techs here) in the year it was under warranty.

Was buying LG for a while but they seemed to last only 14 months.

Am now buying Samsung burners. The Lite-Ons are kinda noisy so I stopped buying them.

But as Dave says, they all do pretty well at their jobs. Still I never burn anything at the highest speed. If it says 16X, I burn at 12X or even at 10X.

I think the trick is to get quality media. Which for me are the Verbatim DVD+R 16X blanks.

 

[Stereodude]

If you want maximum speed you've already got a problem. I've found you can't burn at 16x over USB. You're limited to about 12x or you'll get buffer underuns.

 

[Handruin]

There are a bunch at the $22-$25 range. It's hard to over think the hardware at such a small cost. I would just check for any compatibility issues with your external case, otherwise they should work (with the exception of what SD mentioned). What USB case are you putting it in?

 

[Mercutio]

I really like the Optiarc drives. If you don't want to spend the cast let me know and I'll try to UPS one to you Monday or Tuesday.

 

[LunarMist]

The DVD±R drives hit the limit of USB speeds at about 15.5x, so there are only some buffer underruns for the last ~300MB of the disk. It is not a significant problem IMO.

 

[Howell]

Thanks all for your suggestions and offers. It had not occurred to me that there might be compatibility issues with the drive and translation chip itself so I looked it up.

BYTECC ME-340U2F-BK
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145360

I don't know if the chip inside is any different from mine but I'm guessing its pretty generic.

Merc, I'll pay for shipping for one of those you are offering.

 

[Mercutio]

Don't worry about it. Just let me know where to ship it and I'll UPS it this afternoon.

 

[Howell]

PM sent. Thanks.

 

[Mercutio]

Er.. OK. It'll go out tomorrow then.