[CharlesS]

So, the built-in DVD drive in my MBP is dying, and the way things are going, it's looking like my next Mac probably won't have a built-in optical drive at all. So, I'm looking into getting an external. The drive needs to be Mac-bootable, which is frustrating since very few drives state whether this is the case or not in the product description. What I'm wondering is whether you guys know of any DVD-RW drives that you've had success with, and which are bootable.

A few other considerations:

• I don't know whether I want a 2.5" or 5.25" drive yet at this point. 5.25" drives are faster, of course, but I already have an external 52x CD-RW drive, so a 2.5" drive would only hamper me in terms of speed when burning DVDs. I'm still undecided as to whether I care about burning DVDs fast — I just need to be able to burn them at all. However, pretty much all DVD-related stuff I do is at home, so the portability isn't an absolute requirement either. Therefore, either type of drive is probably fine.
• I'm thinking probably USB for this, since it's much cheaper and I'm assuming that USB 2.0 is probably fast enough for even the higher DVD-R speeds (am I correct in this assumption?). One thing I would like to avoid is FireWire 400, because really, what's the point these days? FireWire 800 would be cool, but only if the price isn't stratospheric.
• One thing I really hate are optical drives that keep the fan running even when there's no disc in the drive and the drive isn't doing anything. I used to have a LaCie back in the early 2000s that sounded like a jet engine, even when idle. Any drive that has this characteristic is something I'd like to avoid.

Anyone have any experiences with Mac-bootable external optical drives?

[gooser]

if there's no disc in the drive why don't you just hit the power button?

[gooser]

what's the point of firewire 400? if it gets the job you want done then there's plenty of reason. now i'm assuming that you're a little bit nostalgic because of your little bomb thingy.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by gooser 

if there's no disc in the drive why don't you just hit the power button?

Convenience.

Originally Posted by gooser 

what's the point of firewire 400? if it gets the job you want done then there's plenty of reason. now i'm assuming that you're a little bit nostalgic because of your little bomb thingy.

It doesn't do the job sufficiently better than USB 2.0 to justify the huge markup, especially since I suspect the latter is likely already fast enough for this job.

I do have a bit of a nostalgic streak, but that doesn't mean I have to use obsolete technology in my new equipment purchases.

[P]

Well, Apple guarantees that you can boot from the external DVD they sell...

What do you mean by 2.5" drives? Do you mean slim drives, like you have in laptops, as opposed to the regular height opticals in desktops?

USB 2.0 is fast enough. Given your aversion to fan noise (which I share), I would recommend that you pick a bus-powered drive - they usually don't have fans at all. Since these drives are all slim, that I can see, I guess the recommendation is a slim, USB-powered optical drive.

[gooser]

well charles, let us know what you decide to get.

[badidea]

I have a Samsung and it does everything it's supposed to do!
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Extern...6894286&sr=8-1

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by P 

Well, Apple guarantees that you can boot from the external DVD they sell...

Yep, you'd think that would be a safe bet. Unfortunately, Apple's system requirements state that it only works with the MacBook Air and the latest Mac mini. A quick Google search turned up plenty of comments from people confirming that that requirement is, in fact, legitimate, and plugging it into other Mac models (or USB hubs) won't work — Apple's doing something funky with the MBA and mini's USB ports, supplying more power than USB is supposed to, and the drive is relying on that. So, the Apple drive won't work.

I'd also like to get some kind of tray-loading drive. Slot-loading optical drives seem unreliable to me — neither I or my family have had one that didn't eventually fail in some way, whereas I bought my tray-loading 52x CD-RW back in 2003 and it still works great.

What do you mean by 2.5" drives? Do you mean slim drives, like you have in laptops, as opposed to the regular height opticals in desktops?

Yep, basically a laptop drive inside an enclosure.

USB 2.0 is fast enough. Given your aversion to fan noise (which I share), I would recommend that you pick a bus-powered drive - they usually don't have fans at all. Since these drives are all slim, that I can see, I guess the recommendation is a slim, USB-powered optical drive.

Well, my desktop 52x CD-RW drive is a noisy beast when it's got a CD in the drive, but the rest of the time it goes to sleep and is silent, so a desktop drive isn't out of the question as long as it has a proper sleep mechanism in it. I am leaning a bit toward portable at this point, though.

Originally Posted by badidea 

I have a Samsung and it does everything it's supposed to do!
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Extern...6894286&sr=8-1

Looks nice. Are you able to boot from it?

[P]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Yep, you'd think that would be a safe bet. Unfortunately, Apple's system requirements state that it only works with the MacBook Air and the latest Mac mini. A quick Google search turned up plenty of comments from people confirming that that requirement is, in fact, legitimate, and plugging it into other Mac models (or USB hubs) won't work — Apple's doing something funky with the MBA and mini's USB ports, supplying more power than USB is supposed to, and the drive is relying on that. So, the Apple drive won't work.

They supply more power than the base 500 mA, but they do that on all newer Macs (so you can charge the iPad). There is an extension to USB 2.0 that allows it. Other bus-powered drives solve this by supplying a "double" USB cable that can draw power from two ports.

[CharlesS]

^ That may be, but I don't have a newer Mac — mine is a 2008 unibody. The machine's still working great other than the optical drive, so I plan to keep on trucking with it for a while longer. And hey, since I'm getting an external optical anyway, might as well at least wait for the inevitable thinner, lighter MBP refresh before I upgrade it, right?

[olePigeon]

I know you're going to need a DVD drive, but I'd also like to recommend on of these:

::: Zalman, leading the world of Quiet Computing Solutions :::

I bought this for work and it's damn freaking AWESOME. You stick .ISO files in it, and it'll mount it as a DVD drive. Has a jog button so you can navigate and select different .ISO files. You can also partition the drive itself and mount certain partitions.

I put .ISOs of OS X discs, Office discs, Windows discs, utility discs, etc. Indispensable. It also has a physical write-protect button which I have enabled by default. It's my go-to device for cleaning off WIndows machines. I also have a .ISO with a bootable Linux that has an NT password reset tool. Works on any version of windows from NT 4.x through Windows 7. Also have Heinrich's Boot CD and Ultimate Boot CD for cleaning off infected computers.

Anyway, my suggestion is to get one of those in addition to your new DVD drive, then make .ISO of all your discs. Put them on the Zalman drive. Now you have a tiny, portable drive that's better suited for your laptop.

[CharlesS]

Um... that looks like an external hard drive enclosure. I've already got two of those. Plus, I'm already able to mount .iso and .dmg files just fine with hdiutil/Disk Utility — am I missing something here?

[amazing]

How about an interim solution?

here's a cheap FW-400 enclosure ($12 free freight) that you put an IDE burner in:

I was surprised to see a cheap external enclosure--they're usually much more (especially if you want USB/Firewire) so I bought one--but I do have multiple IDE burners lying around.

Newegg has IDE burners for $24 or so. Total would be $36 or so.

Speed matters to me because I do hate to wait around if I'm burning a disk.

[CharlesS]

I'm a little wary of the cheap enclosures because they might have that problem where they don't go to sleep and the fan stays permanently revved up even when the drive isn't in use. FW400 and IDE also seem like things that won't be that useful going forward.

With that said, I am kind of curious where you found such a cheap FW enclosure. Do you have a link?

[amazing]

sorry, forgot to post the link

Newegg.com - BYTECC ME-340FW-BK Aluminum 5.25" 1394 External Enclosure

The interim solution works if you've got IDE burners hanging around...and you're right about the future outlook...and a thunderbolt to firewire cable is likely to be questionable--but hey, if you buy Apple's new monitor it's built in (and a bit of an expensive solution.)

[CharlesS]

Actually, if I wanted a FW/IDE enclosure, I could probably just take apart the existing external CD-RW that I have and swap the CD-RW burner in there, which is probably IDE since I bought it in 2003, for a DVD-RW. I'd still be back to square one with needing to find an IDE DVD-RW drive that was Mac-bootable, though.

In the distant past, I've had external burners that weren't able to boot a Mac. That was back in the PPC days, though. Is this still the case, or would any plain-Jane DVD writer be able to boot a modern Mac without that much trouble?

[amazing]

The burners I have are Pioneer and they're bootable (and they used to be the cheapest--I believe Apple used them in the towers.) I believe that Plextor IDE is bootable but don't have any to try.

Anybody have any experience with Liteon?

[CharlesS]

Actually, the internal mechanism in my CD-RW is a Lite-On. It's been pretty good — noisy when in use, but silent when not in use, fast, and Mac bootable. However, this drive is from 2003, so I don't know about the state of things today.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by badidea 

I have a Samsung and it does everything it's supposed to do!
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Extern...6894286&sr=8-1

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Looks nice. Are you able to boot from it?

DO NOT BUY THAT POS.

I'm on my 3rd unit, and I still have problems just reading DVDs.
I bought it for ripping DVDs, to go easy on my built-in drive on my iMac.
About 15% of the DVD don't read at all on this drive, about 50%, I need to insert and eject multiple times before it is able to read the DVD. This has been the case with all three drives.

This is absolute crap.

-t

[amazing]

If you've already got an enclosure, the best thing to do is get an IDE burner to replace the CD-RW.

newegg has various models starting at $24, free freight.

That should tide you over.

[CharlesS]

Swapping it out with another Lite-On is an option, of course, but like I said, I'd really like to move to something that's not FireWire 400. This enclosure is FW400 only, no USB or eSATA, and I'd like to have something that will still work once Apple drops FireWire off the motherboard (I'm sure it will happen before too long). And I don't really see any 5.25" enclosures on Newegg or elsewhere on the Internet that don't either look like junk or have horror stories in the reviews.

[P]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

^ That may be, but I don't have a newer Mac — mine is a 2008 unibody. The machine's still working great other than the optical drive, so I plan to keep on trucking with it for a while longer. And hey, since I'm getting an external optical anyway, might as well at least wait for the inevitable thinner, lighter MBP refresh before I upgrade it, right?

That may be too old, yes. I'd just get another slimline optical (it's mostly the same garbage hardware in them all anyway) with a dual USB cable.

Depending on when you want to upgrade, the next year or so is probably going to be a bit quiet. Ivy Bridge drops in April-May, but the changes aren't very big. AMD has decided that all of its low-end (= mobile mid-range) GPUs are good for another year, with a new partnumber but no new parts or process. nVidia has no new GPUs at all for several months more, and they always start with an expensive top-of-the-line desktop GPU with the mobile GPUs long after. The only likely change before Haswell is that SSDs will get cheaper and larger.

[Eug]

Hmmm... I just assumed all USB optical drives were Mac bootable. I guess that's an incorrect assumption. Certainly, every single USB hard drive I've tried on an Intel Mac is Mac bootable.

Originally Posted by P 

That may be too old, yes. I'd just get another slimline optical (it's mostly the same garbage hardware in them all anyway) with a dual USB cable.

I have found that even dual USB doesn't always work with these 3rd party slimline bus-powered drives.

I have a cheap 3rd party slot-load Blu-ray reader / DVD slimline burner from eBay and I was getting read and write errors on bus-power with dual USB. Finally I just plugged in an AC adapter and now it works fine.

Depending on when you want to upgrade, the next year or so is probably going to be a bit quiet. Ivy Bridge drops in April-May, but the changes aren't very big. AMD has decided that all of its low-end (= mobile mid-range) GPUs are good for another year, with a new partnumber but no new parts or process. nVidia has no new GPUs at all for several months more, and they always start with an expensive top-of-the-line desktop GPU with the mobile GPUs long after. The only likely change before Haswell is that SSDs will get cheaper and larger.

I'm hoping for Ivy Bridge to give us USB 3 (and consequently also increased USB power). Like I've said before, I won't buy any new high dollar Mac until it gets USB 3. I'm just hoping that Apple will make use of the already integrated USB 3 support in Ivy Bridge, by this summer.

It won't matter much for optical drives, but it makes a humungous difference for external SSDs.

P.S. Re: Fans in optical drives. I've never seen the point. All my external optical drives are fanless and the units barely even get warm to the touch. And by fanless for the standard 5.25" half-height drives I just got external enclosures and removed the fan. For the last one though the enclosure wouldn't work properly without the fan. It sensed there was no fan and just kept on power cycling. So, in place of the fan I just stuck in a 330 Ohm resistor which now dissipates 0.44 Watts into the case, and the drive and enclosure work perfectly, again nice and cool.



You've got me curious. I'll have to see which of my USB optical drives boot my Macs. I've got three USB optical drives.

[P]

Any USB DVD should boot any Mac, but that doesn't mean that they do. People cheat on spec conformation, and since Apple rarely bothers to test with parts not its own, older parts in particular may or may not work. With Apple's higher profile in recent years, newer parts work more often.

USB 3 increases the minimum power that the port must be able to supply with active data transfer to 900 mA, but that is still less than what Apple already supplies. There is a newer battery charging supplement that increases the power even further, but that is orthogonal to USB 3.0.

(Sidenote: The USB 3.0 port is physically deeper than USB 2.0, which means that any addition of such a port will use up internal volume - an issue on slim laptops like the MBA. It may also be an issue on the iMac, since ports are oriented on the back of the iMac and connect directly to the motherboard. Just sayin')

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by P 

Depending on when you want to upgrade, the next year or so is probably going to be a bit quiet. Ivy Bridge drops in April-May, but the changes aren't very big. AMD has decided that all of its low-end (= mobile mid-range) GPUs are good for another year, with a new partnumber but no new parts or process. nVidia has no new GPUs at all for several months more, and they always start with an expensive top-of-the-line desktop GPU with the mobile GPUs long after. The only likely change before Haswell is that SSDs will get cheaper and larger.

I don't foresee upgrading for a while at least — other than the optical drive, I'm loving this MBP. Best machine I've had thus far, and especially since I put the SSD in it, I'm not really hurting for speed even though it's 3.5 years old. Therefore, when I do eventually get a new Mac, it's almost a guarantee that it won't have a built-in optical drive anymore, as I see it.

Eug, if you could report on what USB burners boot your Mac successfully, that would be awesome. Thanks!

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Um... that looks like an external hard drive enclosure. I've already got two of those.

I was suggesting it in addition to the DVD drive.

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Plus, I'm already able to mount .iso and .dmg files just fine with hdiutil/Disk Utility — am I missing something here?

Yes, you're missing the big picture. It's not just a normal enclosure. It takes any .ISO file you put on it, then treats it as a DVD drive. After you use the jog button to select a .ISO file, the computer thinks you've inserted a DVD. You can boot from it, install from it, reset your admin password, etc. Because it's emulated at the hardware level, it works on absolutely any OS with USB CD/DVD drivers.

I have a Linux .ISO file on it that lets me reset Windows NT passwords. I also have OEM XP SP3, Vista, and Windows 7 .ISO so I can run repairs and restores on Windows computers, as well as malware removal and firmware flashing utilities. They're all treated as DVDs as far as the computer is concerned.

Oh, and because the .ISO files are treated as a normal DVD, you don't have to worry about formatting a burned disc in some special way to make it bootable. Just boot from the .ISO file directly.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

I don't foresee upgrading for a while at least — other than the optical drive, I'm loving this MBP. Best machine I've had thus far, and especially since I put the SSD in it, I'm not really hurting for speed even though it's 3.5 years old. Therefore, when I do eventually get a new Mac, it's almost a guarantee that it won't have a built-in optical drive anymore, as I see it.

Eug, if you could report on what USB burners boot your Mac successfully, that would be awesome. Thanks!

Which MBP? I put a 128 GB SSD in my 4 GB Core 2 Duo 13" MBP, and now the thing feels super fast. I feel no need to upgrade. In fact, despite the weight, I prefer my 13" MBP's 1280x800 resolution over the MBA. Easy on the eyes. My MacBook Pro has a pixel density of 113 ppi. The 1440x900 13" MacBook Air has a pixel density of 128 ppi. The 1366x768 11" MacBook Air has a pixel density of 135 ppi. I don't have a MacBook Air, but I do have a 1366x768 11" Windows laptop, and I find the native font size too small.

While I like 113 ppi for a laptop, even 109 ppi for a desktop is too high for me. That's the pixel density of the 27" iMac, and I had to leave mine permanently zoomed in Safari to compensate. I prefer pixel densities in desktops under 100 ppi, although the 102 ppi of the 21.5" iMac is OK.

I'll test my USB drives, but I don't know if that's really gonna help you, because I never buy pre-built name brand external optical drives. I always just buy 3rd party enclosures and put off-the-shelf OEM drives in them. Except for the slim usb-powered one, which however is effectively the same, since it's from eBay, and the enclosure is a generic one.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Which MBP? I put a 128 GB SSD in my 4 GB Core 2 Duo 13" MBP, and now the thing feels super fast. I feel no need to upgrade. In fact, despite the weight, I prefer my 13" MBP's 1280x800 resolution over the MBA. Easy on the eyes. My MacBook Pro has a pixel density of 113 ppi. The 1440x900 13" MacBook Air has a pixel density of 128 ppi. The 1366x768 11" MacBook Air has a pixel density of 135 ppi. I don't have a MacBook Air, but I do have a 1366x768 11" Windows laptop, and I find the native font size too small.

I've got a first-generation 15" unibody, and like your machine, mine feels nice and fast since I put the SSD (Crucial C300) in it, even though the laptop was made in 2008. Rock-solid design, too, and easy expandability — this machine has to be one of the best Apple's ever made.

I'll test my USB drives, but I don't know if that's really gonna help you, because I never buy pre-built name brand external optical drives. I always just buy 3rd party enclosures and put off-the-shelf OEM drives in them. Except for the slim usb-powered one, which however is effectively the same, since it's from eBay, and the enclosure is a generic one.

That's what I usually do with hard drives, although for optical I haven't really found any enclosures that I liked. If you have recommendations in that area, too, that'd be fantastic, especially with regard to noise. I'm a little wary of getting a really loud enclosure, as I like my workspace to be relatively quiet.

At any rate, knowing the brand of the mechanism inside the enclosure will be great, as that will at least give some clues toward which brands can be relied on (the pre-built drives are just those same mechanisms inside an enclosure anyway).

Thanks!

[Eug]

So, I tried the Mac OS X Snow Leopard disc in the three drives.

For the two SATA drives, the enclosures were seen by the System Profiler to have a USB to Serial-ATA bridge from Sunplus Innovation Technology. For the one IDE drive, no USB to IDE bridge was listed at all, and it's moot anyway since the drive is ancient and nobody sells IDE burners anymore.

Slimline slot-load Blu-ray reader / DVD burner
Drive: Pioneer BD-ROM BDC-TS02 (A few years old but I couldn't find a lot of useful info on it.)
Firmware: B20X
Enclosure: Generic no-name USB slim enclosure

Standard size Blu-ray burner
Drive: HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 (discontinued)
Firmware: 1.00
Enclosure: Vantec NexStar DX NST-530SU (SATA -> eSATA / USB 2.0), with fan unplugged.

Standard size DVD burner
Drive: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4167B (discontinued and ancient)
Firmware: modified DL13 (region free)
Enclosure: Vantec NexStar DX NST-530U2 (IDE -> USB 2.0), with 330 Ohm 1 Watt resistor in place of fan. This enclosure won't work without some sort of load on the fan connector pins.

All the drives boot my MacBook Pro just fine. Either USB optical drive booting isn't a big issue these days, or else I'm just lucky.

P.S. All three of my el-cheapo PCs (all under $400) can play Blu-ray using those two Blu-ray drives, and that even includes my Atom machine, but my $$$ Core i7 iMac can't. Nice.

[CharlesS]

Thanks! Sounds like LG and Pioneer are winners. I probably don't want to spend the bug bucks on Blu-Ray, as I don't really need it (and Apple doesn't really support it anyway), but it's good to hear that the state of things is apparently better than it was three last time I was in the market for one of these.

Since you removed the fan from the Vantec, I assume it did not have a functional sleep feature then? Maybe I should go the cheap 2.5" enclosure route...

[Eug]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Since you removed the fan from the Vantec, I assume it did not have a functional sleep feature then?

Well, IMO there's no real point for a true sleep feature anyway, since when it's idle, it's... well... idle. (People don't put their internal optical drives into a special sleep mode, either.) Nothing moving at all, and thus no noise. Cold to the touch too. When I used my optical drive more, I used to keep my FW burner on 24/7. The only thing that would indicate that it on was the light on the front bezel.

I leave it off most of the time now though since I only use the drive a couple of times a month.

Maybe I should go the cheap 2.5" enclosure route...

2.5" enclosures are for laptop hard drives and SSDs.



As P was implying, you are mixing up the terminology. Remember that 2.5" is the platter size of those hard drives, and the width of a 2.5" drive is only about 2.75 inches. In contrast, a slim optical drive is about 5.3" wide or wider, which makes sense because a CD is about 4.7" wide.

What you want is a slimline USB optical enclosure (which some call a slim 5.25" USB enclosure).

Originally Posted by turtle777 

DO NOT BUY THAT POS.

I'm on my 3rd unit, and I still have problems just reading DVDs.
I bought it for ripping DVDs, to go easy on my built-in drive on my iMac.
About 15% of the DVD don't read at all on this drive, about 50%, I need to insert and eject multiple times before it is able to read the DVD. This has been the case with all three drives.

This is absolute crap.

Can it only be powered by USB? I had the exact same problem on some of my machines with my external slim USB drive. It turns out it was purely a power issue. Using the dual-USB cable:



- Both USB plugs plugged into two USB ports on my Acer desktop, it worked fine.
- Both USB plugs plugged into two USB ports on the same side of my Acer laptop it often worked fine, but not always.
- One USB plug plugged into a cheap 500 mA AC -> USB adapter, the drive was totally flaky. (This AC -> USB adapter won't charge my iPhone 4, but will charge other USB devices.)
- One USB plug plugged into a cheap 1 amp AC -> USB adapter, the drive was still flaky. (This AC -> USB adapter will charge my iPhone 4.)
- One USB plug plugged into an Apple 1 amp AC -> USB adapter, the drive consistently worked fine.

Actually, mine also has a separate port for a dedicated AC adapter. I just happened to have an old small 2.5 A adapter lying around that fit so I now just use that, with a regular single plug USB cable. This is what the back of mine looks like:

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Well, IMO there's no real point for a true sleep feature anyway, since when it's idle, it's... well... idle. (People don't put their internal optical drives into a special sleep mode, either.) Nothing moving at all, and thus no noise. Cold to the touch too. When I used my optical drive more, I used to keep my FW burner on 24/7. The only thing that would indicate that it on was the light on the front bezel.

I once had a FireWire enclosure that kept the fan running full blast (and it was a loud fan) 100% of the time, whether there was a disc in there or not, causing me to have to switch the thing on and off each time I used it, which was annoying. Of course, this was a long time ago. Have things changed since then?

2.5" enclosures are for laptop hard drives and SSDs.

As P was implying, you are mixing up the terminology. Remember that 2.5" is the platter size of those hard drives, and the width of a 2.5" drive is only about 2.75 inches. In contrast, a slim optical drive is about 5.3" wide or wider, which makes sense because a CD is about 4.7" wide.

What you want is a slimline USB optical enclosure (which some call a slim 5.25" USB enclosure).

I stand corrected. Sorry about that.

Can it only be powered by USB? I had the exact same problem on some of my machines with my external slim USB drive. It turns out it was purely a power issue. Using the dual-USB cable:

- Both USB plugs plugged into two USB ports on my Acer desktop, it worked fine.
- Both USB plugs plugged into two USB ports on the same side of my Acer laptop it often worked fine, but not always.
- One USB plug plugged into a cheap 500 mA AC -> USB adapter, the drive was totally flaky. (This AC -> USB adapter won't charge my iPhone 4, but will charge other USB devices.)
- One USB plug plugged into a cheap 1 amp AC -> USB adapter, the drive was still flaky. (This AC -> USB adapter will charge my iPhone 4.)
- One USB plug plugged into an Apple 1 amp AC -> USB adapter, the drive consistently worked fine.

Actually, mine also has a separate port for a dedicated AC adapter. I just happened to have an old small 2.5 A adapter lying around that fit so I now just use that, with a regular single plug USB cable. This is what the back of mine looks like:

I've noticed that some notebook optical drives don't even have an AC adapter port on the back — I guess this is something to avoid, as well.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

I once had a FireWire enclosure that kept the fan running full blast (and it was a loud fan) 100% of the time, whether there was a disc in there or not, causing me to have to switch the thing on and off each time I used it, which was annoying. Of course, this was a long time ago. Have things changed since then?

Some enclosures are still like that (stupidly). That's why I unplug the fan. It's useless for an optical drive anyway. Not a single one of my Firewire or USB optical enclosures have a functional fan. I've been using optical drives like this for a decade now.

I've noticed that some notebook optical drives don't even have an AC adapter port on the back — I guess this is something to avoid, as well.

It will still work if you use a dual-plug USB cable, but plug the second plug into an AC --> USB adapter. Or else use a powered hub.

Originally Posted by me

- One USB plug plugged into an Apple 1 amp AC -> USB adapter, the drive consistently worked fine.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Can it only be powered by USB?

Unfortunately, yes.

Even with the dual-SUB cable, it's inconsistent.
My last attempt is buyign a new USB hub that has plenty of power. Maybe that will fix it.

-t

[Eug]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Unfortunately, yes.

Even with the dual-SUB cable, it's inconsistent.
My last attempt is buyign a new USB hub that has plenty of power. Maybe that will fix it.

If you have a recent iPhone or iPod touch USB wall-plug and a USB extension cord, give that a shot just for kicks, with your dual USB cable. That will provide cleaner and more power than many powered USB hubs will. The iPhone/iPod plug provides 1 A. Those powered hubs provide only 0.5 A per port. An iPad AC -> USB adapter is another option if you have an iPad.

plus

[badidea]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Unfortunately, yes.

Even with the dual-SUB cable, it's inconsistent.
My last attempt is buyign a new USB hub that has plenty of power. Maybe that will fix it.

-t

I use it on a 17" MBP from 2011 without a USB hub and never had any problems with it!
Boots OSX and Windows and reads every disc (and the reviews on Amazon.de are great as well)!

[cgc]

For the fastest DVD burner around (24x) you can expect a max throughput of ~31.68MB/s. Not sure what the theoretical max read speed is but I'm sure it's quite a bit faster. I'd look for USB 2.0, no need for Firewire.

[Nergol]

I've used external FireWire DVD-RW drives since my first G3 iBook ten years ago. I've never encountered a single one that wouldn't boot a Mac. My current enclosure is a nicer version of the Bytecc someone linked to here that has FW400 and USB. Inside is a generic SATA DVD-RW that I got for free when a buddy of mine parted out a computer that went kaput on him. I've booted and installed OS X, Windows XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu, JoliCloud, ChromeOS Lime, and Android x86 on different machines with it. All with no problem at all. Long story short: I agree with the person who said that any external DVD-RW should be fine.

On another note, if your internal DVD drive does crap out in the MBP, have you considered replacing it with a Data Doubler?

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Nergol 

Long story short: I agree with the person who said that any external DVD-RW should be fine.

Sorry I never got back to this thread. At some point in my searching, I came across this:

Newegg.com - LITE-ON USB 3.0 12X External Blu-ray Disc Writer Model eHBU212 LightScribe Support

The brand was a Lite-On, which was on my list of options due to being the brand that was inside my old CD-RW drive, which has kept on trucking for an impressive amount of time given that I bought it in 2003. Plus, at the time I found this, Newegg was doing a $20 off promotion, making the price only $109.99, which was the same price as the internal mechanism that it uses, so it was like getting an enclosure for free. I hadn't been planning to get a Blu-Ray drive, but for that price, I figured why not — maybe it'll come in handy someday. Plus, it's USB 3.0, which probably doesn't mean anything for CD-R or DVD-R speeds, but it does mean that in the future when everything is USB 3.0, I will be able to plug this into a hub without slowing everything else down, which is a plus. Reviews I found via Google showed it to be blazing fast, although I haven't really been able to test that yet due to not having any 16x DVD-R media, but even 8x is fast enough for me, so no big deal.

It's also a lot quieter than my old Lite-On — they've really made some huge improvements on that front. My old one sounded like a jet engine taking off when you did anything with it — this one does have a fan which fires up when you start really stressing it, but in low-bandwidth situations like watching a DVD movie, it's pretty quiet.

The drive boots from the Snow Leopard disc perfectly, no issues there.

Overall, pretty happy with it.

On another note, if your internal DVD drive does crap out in the MBP, have you considered replacing it with a Data Doubler?

Thought about it. My main drive is already an SSD, though, so that would actually entail buying a regular hard drive, heh. I don't think so, though — this MBP is 3.5 years old at this point, and you never know when Apple's going to release a new model with some new hardware feature that can't be added to the old ones — I figure I'll eventually need to upgrade for either USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, or some other unforseen thing. And now that I've got an external burner, there's no reason to have to buy one with a built-in optical drive anymore, so when I end up needing a new machine, I can get a thinner model with no optical drive — which means no Data Doubler either. I kind of like the idea of eventually having a Mac with absolutely no moving parts that will eventually crap out on you, though.

[aaron01]

With that said, I am kind of curious where you found such a cheap FW enclosure. Do you have a link?

[Nomad71]

Hi CharlesS,

Can I just double confirm you are using the Lite-On EHBU212 on your Mac? I've been looking for confirmation that I can use this on my Mac but not having any luck. I want to play movies, backup my Blu Ray's. If that's what you're doing, I'll know that I can successfully use this unit. Thanks for your feedback.

[mduell]

I'd be surprised if any BR drive didn't work with a Mac.

[Nomad71]

Originally Posted by mduell 

I'd be surprised if any BR drive didn't work with a Mac.

Thanks mduell. That's what I thought and so did one of the techs in my local Apple store. However, I have had a response from Lite-on saying "Sorry, it won't work". I've asked for a more technical response indicating why. We'll see if I get a response.