External DVD Burners.... Suggestions Needed

I am looking to buy an external DVD r for my Mini. Can anyone tell me which is the best to purchase? I would perfer something that would compliment the Mini, but I do not want to compromise performance for looks. Any suggestions?

I have an LG 5163D DVD drive and it works fine with the Mini. It comes in white and complements the Mini nicely. It doesn't, however, come with any software for the Mac, but it works fine with Patchburn and OS 10.4's built in burn capabilities (i.e., disk utility, finder, and probably iTunes, iPhoto and iDVD), and Toast.
I bought it because I don't live in the US and I don't have many options for Mac compatible hardware, and the LG drive was the cheapest DVD drive I could get. It's a very quiet drive (a nice change after my noisy EZQuest CD/RW drive), but it's not a "plug and play" drive - you have to plug it in before turning on the computer. You can use it with either Firewire 400 or USB 2.0. Company support (by e-mail) is reasonably good, especially from the UK division.

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External DVD Burners & iDVD Compatibility

I am looking to purchase external DVD burners for use at my school - that are compatible with iDVD.
I am running iLife 5 on many different pre-intel Tiger Macs (mostly eMacs)
I have looked for a definitive listing of burners and have been receiving conflicting pieces of information.
I understand that I students can save iDVD projects as Disk Images then burn after the fact... but it would be nice to know which External Burners are compatible with iDVD without having to go the Disk Image route.
Any assistance that you can provide me would be tremendously appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Dave

Hello Dave,
iDVD 5 does not natively support external burners. What you have discovered concerning the creation of disk images, though, is not simply a workaround, but a widely recommended procedure, as it greatly reduces the risk of burn errors.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=939694&start=0&tstart=0
hope this helps
mish

External DVD Burner Suggestions?

I am looking for an external DVD burner. Any suggestions?
I was looking at the OWC Mercury Pro units, but it looks like
a unit from LaCie (d2 or Slim) might be a better idea.
Any help would be appeciated.
VB

If the internal optical drive is not working, consider getting an external that has FireWire (IEEE 1394) connectivity. That way, the external is bootable should you need to boot remotely to upgrade the OS or do repairs from an external disk.
That also avoid some of the USB power issues.

Any cheaper external dvd burners out there???

Now that i've found out that my wonderfully expensive apple doesnt have a dvd burner, i have to buy an external dvd burner. I was recommended Lacie but that's too expensive. Anyone know of any cheaper ones that work fine as well??
also, do i need all of that touch8 stuff? can i just get the dvd writer without all of the extra programs?

That's the beauty of it. No drivers required when you make your own. The OS already has everything you need. There is nothing required in terms of additional downloads to make your burner work via Firewire when you install a Pioneer S-Drive into a standard 400 0r 800 firewire enclosure. It works right out of the box!
At one point in time, I too thought that whatever I build in terms of computer hardware was bound to fail. Now it turns out that the items I built, actually last the longest!
Now there is one exception to the above that comes to minds, Lacie (pre configured) ext. FW HD's may rerquire additional 3rd party drivers at times.
Don't ask me why. You'd have to check their web site for this type of support.

Bus powered external DVD burners risky?

I am thinking of putting a second HD in my 1.83 MBP with the Maxupgrades kit , and getting an external DVD writer.
Years ago I had a firewire bus powered Formac DVD writer, which took too much current out of my Ti powerbook and burnt the internal firewire bus.
Are the modern generation of portable bus powered (USB2 and FW) such safe in this respect?
I see that offering includes an internal battery. Why would they do that if the no-battery ones are OK?
Thanks for any input.

so the battery is not there to prevent overload of the USB port,
I doubt it, though having a functioning battery may do so
but so that the device can be used independently (from computer)
Perhaps the drive could power headphones so you could listen to music, but the battery is there to provide additional life when you aren't plugged in. If your MBP normally gets 4 hours of life from a full charge, add that bus powered burner and it will drop - bigtime I'd expect. The extra battery in the device gives you a bit longer life.

Alternating external DVD burners

In theory, could I hook up 2 Lacie external DVD burns to the USB ports on my keyboard and alternate between the two of them while burning DVDs? I would like to do this since the internal burner is too slow and I know you're supposed to let a burner cool down after so many burns.

I still would not use the keyboard ports; they do not have enough power for burning. I tried finding any kb article on the power issue, but could not directly - the only one I found is this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3932
I don't know if the reason for this has to do with the power or not, but thought I'd link to it.
The best test might be to possibly "waste" a DVD and try it - you may wind up with a coaster but you'd know - try this at your own risk. I wouldn't do it.

Any external DVD Burners out there for Dual G4 450?

Hey, I have a Dual G4 450 Gigabit Ethernet with 10.2.8 w/ firewire 1 and a meh USB2.0 from CompUSA. I've checked a couple of places for an external DVD burner but most are listing a 500mhz as a requirement. The OWC drive they're selling isn't listing a speed as a requirement, so I'm worried about ordering their drive. Does anyone have their drive and would know if it works with my speed, and is there still a drive out there that can work with my computer? Thanks for your answers.

Went ahead with another burner.

Which external dvd burners are compatible with lion?

I'm looking into buying an external dvd - dvdL - cd burner but wanted to make sure it would work with lion.. anyone ?
thanks!
H

I have successfully used apples external SuperDrive.
However, I get faster results using the Mac's built-in SuperDrive.

External DVD Burners ?

My first post so please be patient!!! I have an Imac with ComboDrive and am looking to buy an external DVD drive to burn a couple of projects I'm working on in IMovie. Could anyone please offer any recommendations ? Also will I still be able to burn from IDVD using an external DVD writer or is there a way to upgrade my existing drive to Super drive ? Probably silly questions but I'm new at this!!!
Thanks.

Hi, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
You can upgrade to a Superdrive, but simply adding an external drive is much easier, and probably less expensive (no labor). You also don't have to be without the computer till 'they get to it' and you avoid the worry of packing up & transporting the computer.
Garyjr is right, there are many drives that will do fine with the iMac; I got the LaCie d2 for actually a bit less than the cost of an internal Superdrive (without even counting labor), and have been happy with it.
The only really silly question is the one not asked which would have saved unnecessary trouble/expense/unhappiness, just for the asking!
Vicki

Suggestions on external DVD burners for Mac

Last one I had was a Mad Dog multimedia burner which I paid about $140 about 6 months ago, the puppy had a freak accident and got in soapy water don't ask how.
What I'm trying to find is a burner in the $100 mark, any suggestions?

I strongly recommend http://www.macsales.com/ Firewire burners. They are the only ones that out of the box are compatible with iDVD, and Apple's other DVD burning applications. Others may need http://www.patchburn.de/ and specific firmware updates to be compatible. Some of these are outlined in the website:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/
It wasn't until the Intel Macs, that USB became bootable for Mac OS X.

Are external DVD burners better quality than an internal on a laptop?

I've always had this prejudice that stock Powerbook G4 internal DVD drives are poor quality and prone to breaking down. I lost mine after less than a year of service and it seems to me that folks are regularly complaining about stock internal burners going out.
I've had no working DVD drive for a couple of years on my old G4 and I'm getting a new one this week. I also have a Sony external dual layer DVD burner that is a real workhorse for me. It's what I've been using for all these years.
Now I'm wondering, when I have the new DVD burner installed next week, do I need to baby it and use the external whenever possible? Should I only use it whenever absolutely necessary and let the external do all the heavy lifting? Is this new internal drive going to fritz out on me after six months just like the last one did?
I've burned hundreds, maybe close to a thousand, DVDs on my external Sony and the machine is still good as gold. No sign of wear.
Is there any evidence to support this idea that internal laptop drives are delicate pieces of equipment waiting to break down and that external Sonys are solid and rugged? Or is that just my personal experience and is everyone else happy with their internal drives?
By the way, my new internal drive being shipped to me this week is an OWC (Other World Computing) drive made just for the older 400 mHz Powerbook G4 Titaniums. There's not a lot of choice in the market for a drive for such an old machine.

Software is the key to quality. Period, along with the quality of the original content, if it is good quality then you will get good quality, if it's poor quailty then you will get poor quality.
Use the best.
http://www.roxio.com/

External DVD burners once and for all!

I did not buy my mini with a dvd burner on purpose because I wanted to use Lacie light scrib. So, does it work? Can you use other external burners with iLife 5 and iDvd 5 as advertised when it came out? Or am I wasting my time?

Edward,
iDVD5 will let you "save as disk image" and then burn the image with Toast or Disk Utility. on external drives.
Also there are some other helper apps and maybe even drivers from LaCie that will let 'em burn directly from iDVD, but I prefer the image route in any case....
John

Restrictions on external DVD burners and HDDs?

Hello, I REAALLY want to buy a mac mini - my incessantly crashing Windows machine has a new 160GB drive (internal) and a new Sony DRU720A DVD burner - what I'd like to do is buy a couple of 5.25" enclosures with USB 2.0 or Firewire connections and connect them as externals to the Mini...
are there any complications using a Sony dvd burner with a mac mini? HDD issues to be aware of?
Thanx in advance - help me get back to happy computing!
ferd

I would guess that there will be no issues at all with your hard drive. Those are pretty standard pieces of hardware that are supported by both hard drive enclosures and Mac OS X. A DVD burner may be a different story though. It will have to be supported by Mac OS X whether it's an internal drive or in an external enclosure. However, there is a third party utility you may be able to use to create a driver for your DVD burner. Check out the Patch Burn utility. I've never used it, so I can't comment on it's compatibility, but it seems like it might help you if the drivers aren't already built-in.
-Doug

Info on Sony DRX820U external DVD burner or other.

Hi all
I would like to know any info about the Sony DRX820U external DVD burner and I know this one is a USB connection I know that it has a firewire one too. I know that this one doesn't say that it will work with a Mac it only has Windows only burning apps. Can I still use it even if it doesn't say on the box Mac compatible or it's just that they don't have any Mac progs in the box, does this goes for all external DVD burners that doesn't say Mac compatible? I don't mind if it doesn't boot from it I just want to burn at the 16X speed compared to my 8X that I have now. If you have any other type of DVD burners besides the Sony, please let me know.
Thanks!!!

Hi
Sony is not renowned for Mac support, even thogh Apple has used specific model drives, many do not have firmware that works well with a Mac.
I would suggest looking at a Mac-vendor such as LaCie or OWC if you want an external drive; FireWire is preferable, because you can boot from it if need be.
On the other hand, internal 16X DVD burners (DVR-111D or ND3550A) can be had for under $40 online; I would suggest replacing your stock drive with one of these. You can always get an external FireWire/USB 5.25" (BYTECC makes perfectly functional inexpensive casings, check out Newegg.com as one resource for both items) casing for your existing drive, if you want the option of having two drives available.

External dvd burner no longer works

hello
recently upgraded from leopard to snow leopard. i have two macs in an audio studio where the computers, their hard drives, and some other gear is one room away from me in a machine room. this cuts down on noise for me in the control room of the studio.
i've used external dvd burners for the two studio macs. both have been working great. these burners have worked fine under both tiger and leopard. suddenly, after the snow leopard install, neither works. i have never installed any special drivers for these, the os has always properly handled them.
i have found that if i insert a disc, i can power the burner off and then back on and then the disc will mount. it will not mount just by inserting it per normal. also, cd burning software doesn't see this drive. it's not a choosable option in the menu.
this is a major pita. i don't think that there is anything else that i can do here. i'm hoping it's clear to apple that this is an area of concern. firewire devices ought to be able to plug in and work, and the os which has handled this so well in the past is not doing it right now.
i've tried some basic troubleshooting, like swapping firewire cables, but have realized via these forums than many others are having similar issues. i'd love to have this working asap.

well, i have two external dvd drives, and both are firewire only. and neither one works anymore. it's quite a bummer. i'd love to see them working again. i kind of need them. i sure didn't expect this to be something that stopped working in snow leopard.

External DVD Burners.... Suggestions Needed

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