What do people typically fit nowadays? The existing internal writer is IDE, but I have a SATA slot spare on the mobo.
Alternatively, I could go for an external USB writer, as they are not expensive. And the advantage would be that I could move it from one PC to another easily.
Its not difficult to move an internal from one machine to another either really...
I have been using Samsung SH-224FB DVD Re-Writers recently. Does the job, reads and write most formats and cost me under £15 in a retail pack with alternate colour bezels etc.
I'd just like one that makes decent reliable cds. The old ide one in this computer works fine, but the new one in my new machine seems to make cds that only some players can find the start of. Brian
That's exactly the one I've been looking at on Amazon. Current price is £11.78 with free delivery on orders over £20 (which I assume means I have to order something else to go with it to the tune of £8.23).
I've gone off the external idea again, as I read that one of the Samsung external models needs a double-ended USB cable (whatever double-ended means in this context), else there's not enough power for power-intensive tasks like ripping. If this is a failing of one particular external witer, it may be a general disadvantage with all of them. No low-power problem with an *internal* drive!
It means a cable that has two usb plugs at the computer end. This is because a single USB 2.0 port might not supply enough power for the drive. Not uncommon with external drives.
I imagine it's common to lots of external drives. It's not a big deal you just need 2 usb ports near ear other to plug them in. USB 3 overcomes that problem, but not much help if you computers don't have usb 3 ports.
Horses for courses.
I would go for an internal drive unless I expected to needs to use it often enough on multiple computers. (and if I really, really did need to I've got an adapter that I can use to connect an old internal drive to a usb port. But unlikley as all the computers her will boot from a usb stick if necessary)
I bought one around a year ago. At that time it looked as though early models might have needed the double-headed cable - but by the time I got mine (and for at least months before) they universally worked on single-headed cables.
The one I got was also expressly suited to working with Macs - which can be fussy. I needed it to work with a MacBook Pro without its own built-in drive.
TSSTCorp? ie Toshiba/Samsung? The cheap SH-... ones other people have been suggesting are renowned for that. I gave up on DVDs after having one of those.
Is that a company one can trust? Their web page says the full price is £150 !! So that they then can say one saves 93%. Sounds a bit "wide boy" to me...
And this is the one I finally decided on. Came yesterday and was a doddle to install. I was initially concerned that the SATA drive didn't have a connector for the cable to the sound card, but apparently the cable has been redundant for years on and after XP. I assume the SATA cable takes care of the sound somehow.
Drive works fine and, contrary to some reviews on Amazon, absolutely not noisy.
I'd say a BIOS not booting from USB CD is pretty rare thing nowadays. This (and USB floppy support) came sometime back before booting from USB memory sticks.
Ah, USB floppy disk drives. Yup get one of these before they disappear...
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