Why are there no FW800 drives to buy

[CrackedButter]

At the moment i see FW800 hard drives but why have we not seen optical drives?

Can anybody tell me if there are any anyway?

[LethalWolfe]

granite digital (http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg23_firewireidecasekits.htm) sells FW800 5.25" encloures.


Lethal

[Makosuke]

Originally posted by CrackedButter
At the moment i see FW800 hard drives but why have we not seen optical drives?I assume a big part of the reason is that most optical drives have a transfer rate well below even 50MB/s (even a 52x CD is only theoretically at 8MB/s), so there's absolutely no need for the bandwidth that FW800 provides.

[patrick0brien]

Originally posted by CrackedButter
At the moment i see FW800 hard drives but why have we not seen optical drives?

Can anybody tell me if there are any anyway?

-CrackedButter

It wouldn't be practical as it is not possible to spin a CD fast enough to saturate your transfer wire (FW400) to the point of requiring FW800.

The only way I can think of to break that barrier is to come out with 'wide' lasers capable of reading many - if not all CD tracks at once.

[CrackedButter]

This is good then, i don't need FW800, not for a while anyway.

I'm slowly changing my mind over a PB purchase, and while i was gunning for a 15", i may now jump at the 12".