Re: external DVD drive recommendation

On 2007-07-09 10:42:20 -0500, Frank <gno52@xxxxxxxxxx> said:

please give me a recommendation for a external DVD drive that can read
MiniDVDs for my iMac OS 10.4.10 machine.
I can't seem to find one on google search

I purchased a Lacie d2 DVD±RW double-layer DVD drive a year ago, and it has been an absolute pleasure to use:

<http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10908>

This drive is passively cooled and is, as a result, very quiet. It's been 100% reliable - despite the fact that there is no fan to cool it. I remember, shortly after purchasing it, seeing someone in this news group say that they were supposedly prone to overheating problems in the past. But it seems Lacie has addressed that issue, because I haven't had a single problem with mine.

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Before I purchased the Lacie, I had purchased an internal Pioneer DVR-111D-BK "SuperDrive" from Other World Computing:

<http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/optical-drives/superdrives/powermac/>

This drive was to replace the internal SuperDrive in my G5 tower. But when I received the drive, there were several problems with the drive:

1. The drive arrived dead. Inserting any CD or DVD media (blank or already formatted, even audio CDs) resulted in the drive just sitting there for a moment and then rejecting the media. I didn't hear the typical loud spinning noise, and no media would mount on my desktop. No errors were reported in the system log; so this must have been a hardware failure of some sort.

2. Third-party software was required to get better functionality under Mac OS X 10.4 (and even then full compatibility was not guaranteed); worse yet the third-party software required was not released - only an alpha is available at the time:

<http://helpcenter.owc.net/index.php?x=&mod_id=2&root=10&id=107>


3. Unlike other drives, I noticed the drive tray did not automatically retract if the tray was in the open position on reboot or shut down.

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BTW, this topic has been discussed here many times in the past. I'm betting you can find a lot of details with a simple Google search that you might not otherwise find by asking the question again now.

Google is your friend:

<http://tinyurl.com/yufa8q>
and
<http://tinyurl.com/yrexc4>
etc...

--
JR

.

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