Buying a burner

mar|<

Can anyone recommend a good external dvd burner? It will be my first experiment with buring dvds so I dont need a hugely high spec one but not one that will limit me in the future, should I buy a dual layer burner? The cheaper the better of course, but quality. wondering about one inparticular from peats... Liteon external 16x any help on this would be great

Karoma

PC or Laptop?
Are your ports USB 2.0? Do you have Firewire?

Get the exact model number for that drive and check on-line. Liteon are hit and miss, TBH.

mar|<

PC, have usb2 and firewire. having trouble finding model number or site reviewing particular burner, ill keep looking.

Karoma

Internal drives are usually considerably cheaper & not too difficult to install...

mar|<

difficulty was one of the factors that pushed me towards an external one(I havnt changed/installed hardware in a comp before) but I would also like to be able to move it between pcs with ease. what would installing an internal one involve?(if its not too long an explanation of course) can you recommend any?

Tony H

http://compreviews.about.com/od/tutorials/ss/DIYCDDVD.htm
have a look at that and as for dvd drives you cant go wrong with a NEC drive like this
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=314090 or a benq
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=317129

Ruu_Old

Theres a lot cheaper than Peats, tbh. Go with something from Komplett.ie

SeanW

mar|< wrote:

difficulty was one of the factors that pushed me towards an external one(I havnt changed/installed hardware in a comp before) but I would also like to be able to move it between pcs with ease. what would installing an internal one involve?(if its not too long an explanation of course) can you recommend any?

It's simple enough to add a drive internally. Basically, all optical, CD or DVD drives and older hard drives use the IDE interface and it's relatively simple to figure out how to connect things up, especially if you have a CD/DVD ROM inside already.

1st open the case and slot the drive in to an empty 5.25 drive bay. You might have to screw the drive onto the chassis for it to stay secure, or there may be an alternative system in place. If you're not sure, look at the other drives to see how they're secured, see how it's physically secured to the chassis.

Then you have to hook up power, there should be a spare cable going from the power supply box in the top-back corner of the computer. It should be the same type of power cable as any exsiting optical drives.

I'm guessing you already have a CD/DVD ROM drive on your computer, so it will have an IDE ribbon cable going from the motherboard to the existing drive. IDE allows 2 drives to operate from one motherport controller, and most IDE ribbon cables allow the connection of 2 drives, one as a master, at the end of the cable (which you can boot from (like with a Windows XP setup CD)), another a slave (which you can't). Disconnect the IDE ribbon cable from any existing drive, if that's physically necessary, and connect both drives to the cable. Don't touch the motherboard end of the cable.

mar|<

great:D extremely helpful guys, cheers

spartacus93

mar|< wrote:

great:D extremely helpful guys, cheers

Go for an internal one. It is not difficult, and you would be VERY unlucky if you actuall damaged anything. Go for it

mar|<

sounds good, should save me some money aswell