Please recommend me an external CD/DVD writer to go with new Mac Mini

I'm thinking of buying a new Mac Mini, and I would like an external CD/DVD drive for it. It needs to be able to read and write to both CDs and DVDs, and I'm generally looking for something as cheap as possible. Obviously I don't want something that's going to break within a year though!
I plan on using it to watch DVDs, so something fairly quiet would be ideal. Speed isn't really a big issue for me.
If anyone can recommend something suitable and reliable (or, alternatively tell me what to avoid), I would be very grateful.

What is too expensive? The Apple Superdrive is $79.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD564ZM/A/apple-usb-superdrive
I personally use a Samsung Blu-ray drive that burns and reads all.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151253
One caveat, there is no Blu-ray player on the Mac that is free.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/47163/aurora-blu-ray-player
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/40390/macgo-blu-ray-player

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For the downloaded OSX Lion form the Mac App Store you can use this http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/39701/lion-diskmaker to make yourself a disk.
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Message was edited by: den.thed
Sorry John Hammer1, I didn't see your reply at the time I posted.

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BDAqua wrote:
What exactly shows in System Profiler>Hardware>USB for those drives?
Boot from the Install Disc & see if they show up, not grayed out in Disk Utility.
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We were thinking along the same lines. While at home I dug up a firewire enclosure and put a bootable GUID formatted drive in it (that I had in one of the usb enclosures) and started her computer holding down the option key and then chose to boot from the external firewire. All usb drives are now mounting upon connection. I asume that her drive has bad sectors on it (even though the SMART status says it's OK) and is not loading all the drivers properly for USB to mount. I was suspicious from the beginning that the OS was corrupt when she first had me look at it. It was at that point that I booted it in target mode, connected to my Macbook Pro, and then CCC'd to a usb drive that I had. I then had a couple of difficulties installing the new OS. Should have known......
I am now going to put a new drive in it for her and she'll be up and running.
Thanks so much for your help and thoughts that got me thinking as well.
pax

Unable to backup to external hard drive with new Mac Mini

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Saul in PA wrote:
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http://www.macworld.com/article/160977/2011/07/blu_ray_movie_playback_comes_to_t he_mac.html
Did you even read the article you linked to?
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My DVD write comes up with an error -43. Never done that before. What could be the reason. Please help

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OT

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Please recommend me an external CD/DVD writer to go with new Mac Mini

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