[gorickey]

My CDRW/DVD combo drive in my 667 TiBook DVI is crapping out (that's another story) and was wondering what you guys recommened I do about replacing it...

Should I:

1.) Buy an internal replacement ($$$) - easy to install??!!
2.) Buy an external replacement ($$$)
3.) Or since I NEVER watch DVD's on my machine, just buy an external CD/CDRW SmartDisk drive? ($$)

Speed is not that important to me either since I do most of my burning at work; however, right now I have nothing and just want to be able to boot off of CD's and whatnot again to install stuff. One thing that is very important to me though is it must be FireWire bus-powered!!

What brands/experiences do you guys think I should look into...I don't want to spend over $150 if possible.

[schmoe]

That really sucks =( Care to share what happened in the event other people experience the same thing? I take it you don't have AppleCare?

An external drive is great for burning, but what if you are out with your laptop and find that you need to install some new software, listen to a CD, etc? Having a built in CD drive is pretty important in my opinion.

[gorickey]

It does suck, and ironically...I haven't a clue in the world what happened. All I know is that I carefully moved it with me in the bag from place to place one weekend and when I tried it again, it didn't do anything. However, it's still sort of "functional"...for example, I can stick in some CD's and it will think and think and think before finally spitting up the disc on the desktop. Sometimes that can take up to 5 minutes of "thinking" before being loaded. Not all CD's will load however. I can "never" boot off a CD. And whenever the drive does work, it reads the CD very, very slowly. Some mechanism is for sure not working properly.

I may look into the internal drive if I can find one on eBay relatively cheap...however, for now I am looking into some OWC Mercury 52x External FW drive options for $129...

Thanks.