Originally Posted by MacMiniMan
what good external superdrives work with OSX and idvd 6 itunes and dvd studio pro all the ;latest software. was over at other world computing looking at there drives but wanted to get yalls opinion first. thx
My Pioneer Super drive, media, sw and iTunes library set up.....
Goal was to store a huge CD collection in A lossless format with iTunes and then completely back up that library on another drive. Also the ability to burn favorite MP3 and CDs to atttractively printed media.
Very happy with my Pioneer DV 109, inside the OWC Mercury Elite. The plug and play combo FW/USB drive was appreciated by this beginner. Patchburn was required to get many drives working, not sure of current status.
The Pioneer drive has read all but a very few cd/dvds, out of many hundreds of CDs while putting my large CD collection into an external (OWC Mecury Elite FW 250GB Seagate) drive organized with iTunes.
Using a 400GB Seagate, consumer external combo drive, to backup itunes music collection, written in Apple Lossless on a OWC 250GB. Wish I new that Seagate uses an initio FW chip, instead of the suggested for Mac, oxford FW chip. Everything still works fine so far, using Super Duper backup sw. Now there is no chance to lose my 150GB and growing Apple lossles format music library should the OWC 250Gb fail. Transfering the 150GB music files from the OWC 250GB to the new multi partioned Seagate Combo Ext took about 3 hours 45 minutes. "Smart Backups" with Super Duper take around 5-8 minutes or so, to keep the cloned HD up to date.
Burned CD/DVD discs have been mostly readable by almost every other drive tested. Noticed the Pioneer DV 109s were also used in mass duplication machines, so I expect a long life.
FW can be used as bootable drive for the Mac. An added USB and 2 FW ports cost extra, hoping for future flexibility.
Use decent media. I like the Supermedia store Verbatim media and generic inks, but there are lots of options, like Verbatim at Sam's Club. I use 16X write for stable CD copies. The Super drives have been getting faster all the time, but burning slower gives picky, and older players devices a improved chance for error free playback.
I use higher up the line Verbatim inkjet printable CDs, there may be better quality media across the entire line, like Taiyo Yuden. Dual layer media gets expensive, the Ritek DL inkjet printable is one of the cheapest, $2 at Sam's Club right now, but quality of Ritek, bench test wise, is not very good.
The Epson 200,300 inkjet series makes great looking printed disk images start around $100. Included epson Disc printing sw works great with Google images. Super media store generic ink has been working fine at a fraction of the cost for printing attractive labels.
I mostly use full featured Toast 7.02, skip Popcorn.
The abbreviated Discus Re version included with Toast is another label printing option.
Toast allows CD text inclusion unlike direct iTunes burns. Very useful . Currently there are some faster than Toast DVD compression burning applications.
Favorite CD/DVD media,SW, and drive info.
ripdifferent.com (forums)
cdfreaks.com extensive drive tests
-
Dave
Top