External CD/DVD drive

[Bill]

A friend has a need for a high speed external drive to read CD's as fast as possible. It plugs into a Raspberry Pi based device and we are not confident of the usb power available.

He bought a non-usb powered LG GE24NU40 from Amazon UK, which was shipped from the USA. After about 2 weeks it has failed. He called Amazon, who said it would have to be posted back to Kentucky at his cost. If they agreed it was faulty, his costs would be refunded. The Post Office have told him the postage cost would be over ?20, so he is now considering his options.

He has tried an external usb powered drive, but that is nowhere the same speed and looking at the drive in it, it is the same model as in my ancient Lenovo T410 laptop. The LG drive is rated at 48x for CD's.

I have had him check the psu that came with the drive, and it is rated for 110 to 240 volts. The drawer opens and closes, but no CD's are detected. I have got him looking for his CD cleaning disk.

I suggested he looked for a UK source of a similar drive, but no-one seems to sell anything but usb powered ones now.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a decent high speed non-usb powered external drive? I don't want to suggest buying a case and internal drive, as I'd have to drive over to him to assemble it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Why not use a linux PC and network it to the Pi? :-)

[GB]

Why Linux?

[Tricky Dicky]

If he bought the drive through Amazon UK then his contract is with them and he should send it back and get a refund. If Amazon choose to ship products direct from a manufacturer that is their problem not his. If he has someho w managed to make a purchase from Amazon US then it is "caveat emptor" I am afraid.

Richard

[Andy Burns]

is this the brennan player again?

sounds like it was sold *on* amazon, but not sold *by* amazon.

48x is about 7.5 megabytes/sec, USB2 speed it 60megabytes/sec, so even with the rPi's single USB hub bottleneck, it ought to handlre reading as fast as the drive can, where's it getting written to? if it's network or another USB disk, that's got to get through the same single bottleneck too.

Do you mean no CD's are detected, or no CD drives are detected,

boot the Pi, do a "dmesg -c" plug in the USB CD, then do another dmesg, and see if you get messages about /dev/sdc being detected and used as a CD drive etc.

Get a microSATA (9+7pin) to SATA (15+7) splitter and take the power from something else with e.g. a 4 pin molex connector and the data from the 7 pin SATA

[Roger Mills]

Why not use a USB-powered drive, connected to the Pi via a powered hub?

[RJH]

That's what I would have thought - or even try one of those Y-USB 2-1 leads. My cheap but effective Samsung USB portable drive is only rated at 24x for CD, though, which if similar might not be enough for the OP.

[Bill]

Yes. It has now been back to the manufacturer at least 3 times. Once because it fell off the shelf.

The ad on Amazon UK says "Dispatched from and sold by Amazon US. Purchase is subject to separate terms and conditions. ". He has also looked at the conditions for its return. It has to be posted within AIUI

2 days.

It is writing to the internal hard drive on sda1 . I don't think this is usb in any form.

The drive seems to be detected as sr0, It seems to throw out some data about itself. On 2 tries, one said 24x, the other 48x. This is all done via Teamviewer and PuTTY, and he has to balance the various items on his knee, so not ideal. The caddy opens and closes as expected, but the drive doesn't spin up

The same thing happens if he plugs it into his PC. The drive is seen but no music ever plays. I think it has failed. He still hasn't found the cleaning disk, but points out that the drive never spins up, so that can't work.

I think that is beyond what he and I want to do.

We both really want to find a basic non-usb powered drive. This drive was ripping CD's in 3 minutes as against 20 to 30 minutes via the usb powerd drive or the internal CD drive.

[Andy Burns]

Well a Pi doesn't have SATA, so it's probably via another USB->SATA adapter.

sounds good.

I'd agree, whether it's worth burning £20 to send it back, or just get another one for £10, I presume it's a laptop/slim one (don't think I've ever seen a USB powered desktop full-size one) then again, can't see many slim 48X only full sized.

Is he happy to use a full-size drive? got a spare ATX PSU, just short green to black one the 20/24 pin plug so the PSU starts up, and power the drive with a molex lead ... might get fun balancing it all on his knee though.

[Bill]

There is something weird about the device the Raspberry Pi is in. It has USB's A, B and C, all on the back panel. The manufacturer's instructions seem to be to avoid B, and try A or C to find the one the CD detects.

I know nothing about Raspberry Pi's, so don't know whether this would be normal or not.

We may try a powered hub, but this is a unit that sits discreetly in the lounge, so many more wires might tip his long-suffering wife over the line.

To TNP- We have tried ripping to a PC and then moving over the network, but this proved too complicated for my elderly but sprightly non technical friend.

[Bill]

In message , Andy Burns writes

I've just tried dmesg-c on a Linux Mint laptop here when plugging in my Samsung external usb powered drive. After the drive parameters there are two lines saying "Attached sr0" and attached something else. On his Brennan dmesg -c, there was no sign of anything being attached.

I think he is resigned to sending it back and risking the ?20. It is a full sized drive, and that is what he is trying to find. My quick search hasn't found anything - not even a caddy to put an internal 5.25 drive in. Everything now seems geared to the low profile slower drives.

[Steve Walker]

Presumably because the Raspberry Pi runs Linux and networking two Linux machines together is both simple and fast.

SteveW

[dennis]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Pi can't run the drive at full speed anyway. It can't run anything else at full speed not even on the 3b+ I have. They are nice devices but quick they ain't.

anyway..

[dennis]

£13.99 on amazon.co.uk. cheaper than sending it back.

[dennis]

forgot link

There are loads of them.

Are you confused because it says 24x?

[Bill]

In message , "dennis@home" writes

Thanks for the pointer to that enclosure. That didn't come up in my searches. I had seen one or two more expensive ones priced from over ?50 upwards, which seemed excessive.

Internal drives are not the problem and I know that many of the 24x writers will read CD's at up to 48x.

With his failed drive all I can say is that until it died he says it did read a CD in 3 minutes as against 10 to 30 minutes on his 2 smaller drives.

I am not sure why there is such a speed difference, maybe bigger cache or just better read quality. I don't know whether his device has any check of the quality of each rip. I do know that in tests on a laptop here, dbPoweramp is quicker than EAC, which I understand is because dbPoweramp just checks quality against a database, rather than making multiple passes to check for consistency.

He is going to post the drive back tomorrow, hope for the cash refund in the fullness of time, and probably will order another of the same type again from Amazon. He is hoping he just got a bad one.

[Theo]

Either one of those Y cables:

(versions with different connectors available)

or a SATA DVD drive in a powered case, for example:

taking the second USB cable to a mains-plug USB supply, eg from Poundland

Theo

[Brian Gaff]

Why not get a powered usb hub and then there will be no issue with power from the usb. Not sure what you mean about rated 110v, that would be silly in this country and would probably go bang when you plugged it in. I do feel a little more pressure at Amazon might convince them its their problem unless he bought it from a marketplace vendor not in the UK of course. always pays to look at the supplier name in the checkout you know, it normally says supplied and sold by bloggs inc of china or something rather than the usual Amazon info. The fact is it should not fail in such a short time. I was going to mention that 52X is the fastest accurate reading speed you can expect and thus 48 seems not too bad. Some music cds seem to keep throttling back and retrying so one supposes these do not like being read fast. Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

Easier to network to a linux based Pi..

[Bill]

In message , Brian Gaff writes

Brian, he has decided what to do now, so this is just to reply to your points.

1. I suggested he tried a powered usb hub. He found one, but not the correct cables. Meanwhile, I read some adverts for external slimline usb drives that stated they may not work via an external hub. I have no idea why this may be.
2. The reference to 110 volts was in the context of this being supplied by Amazon US and coming with an American plug. I was getting him to check that the psu did state 240 volts as well as the native 110. It appears that if you place an order with Amazon UK for an item supplied by Amazon US, you are hit by a bunch of different terms and conditions. One specific condition in this case was that the item was not covered by the manufacturer's warranty. All this was a surprise to me, and to him.
3. He is hoping that he will get a refund if it is agreed it has failed. One just hopes that Amazon in Kentucky does actually test it and agree.
4. Yes, the 52x max speed seems to ring a bell here, and 48x seems to be a reasonable expectation for a 5.25" drive. But all the slimline drives, as currently available in external cases, seem to max out at 24x.

This threw up a lot of interesting things I had never thought about. I do wonder whether Amazon's t & c's comply with British law in this case, but I'll leave that up to him to worry about..