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Are there any mac compatible external dvd burners?

Actually, I don't know if an incompatible external USB burner even exists.
 
One issue is that some manufacturers of burners, specially internal ones, only provide firmware updates that require Windows to be applied.
 
You can buy an external burner from a company like LaCie, which actually support the Mac, or pick your favorite internal drive (checking in the manufacturer support pages if they have firmware updates that run on Mac) and get a matching (PATA or SATA) external case (USB or FireWire) that works well with OSX (eg, from OWC).

Burners are slow, so the speed advantage of FireWire is not an issue.
 
I am not sure if all firmware updaters for internal drives also work when they are installed in an external case.
 
i do have an ide burner in my pc tower. if i could convert that into external that would be ideal as i could ust move it between the two if needed

is that possible?

would i be able to say boot from an external drive if need be? in terms of os installs on my pc?
 
You just need a 5.25" case that says you can put an optical drive in (ie, it has a removable faceplate, which I think is always the case, as nobody uses 5.25" hard drives anymore since a long, long time in anything except uber-obsolete collectible/legacy hardware). It must be for IDE (a.k.a PATA) drives.

I don't know about the boot/install issue, specially for PCs.

To update the firmware, you will probably have to do it in the PC (maybe putting it back in).

Updating the firmware is important for optimizing the burn speed of new media that comes out.
 
I think the most important issue is to find a good case. I looked at the reviews for the cases with both USB+FireWire at newegg, and I didn't like them too much, so I would go to macsales.com for the case, which specializes in Mac stuff.

It also seems the case would be quite cheaper if you just got a very similar drive which is PATA:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136147

It will end up costing you about $100 with an OWC-branded case. OWC also sells a much cheaper "Syba" case which you might also find at newegg, but they don't specify the model. It's the first time I heard from this brand.

For $100 you can get a ready-made LightScribe drive from OWC but it won't be as fast, plus it seems that it doesn't write to DVD-RAM, only read. [I like DVD-RAM, one just uses it like a hard disk, plus it can be rewritten around 100000 times, compared to about 1000 for DVD+-RW. Everytime you mount the disc read/write, the superblock is written].
 
A DVD burner is a DVD burner. Each OS has its own generic drivers for them. There are no Windows DVD burners and Mac DVD burners. You might find that if it ships with some DVD playing software this might be Windows only (who cares) or Firmware updates might be Windows only.
 
I would make a thread titiled "Recommend me a 5.25" DVD burner enclosure"
 
i bought a cheap liteon external usb2 dvd burner which said it was windows only, but took the risk since someone had left a review saying they'd used it on mac os x, and it was cheap enough that i wouldn't loose too much money if it didn't work - but it did work fine. so if you don't mind taking a gamble you could always just buy a cheap external one to save you the hassle of finding a drive and an enclosure, and take the gamble of whether it works or not.
 
I think the only gamble is when you buy a cheap enclosure instead of a reputable one reported to work well with the Mac.
 
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