Cheapest lightscribe drive that works with a mac

[juliancs]

Hi folks

I need a lightscribe drive (internal or external, not fussed. Perhaps external for ease) for labeling assignment discs. I'm not bothered by the write speed or anything, but looking to spend as little as possible - student budget and all that. I assume all lightscribe engraving quality is the same?

I've found some on ebay but often they are not compatible with macs. Any recommendations or a place to start would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

(P.S - not interested in getting a printer that does those inkjet discs!)

 

[CaptainChunk]

If you do an internal, which Mac Pro do you have? This is important because 2006-2008 models use PATA drives, whereas the 2009 model uses SATA drives.

If you have an older Mac Pro (2006-2008), try this.

For 2009 models, this LG should work fine.

In either case, you'll have to pop off the front bezel of the drive for it to fit in the case.

For external drives, pretty much anything modern with a USB 2.0 interface should work.

 

[Roman23]

compared to LG,

Pioneer is much better and more mac friendly.. LG is what apple puts in the mac pros, hense the model: HL-DT-ST-GH41N - which is a piece of crap.. Want to get a nice sata drive? Look for the Pioneer dvr-218L

LG is crap.
and so is Hitachi - they both own each other.

If you do an internal, which Mac Pro do you have? This is important because 2006-2008 models use PATA drives, whereas the 2009 model uses SATA drives.

If you have an older Mac Pro (2006-2008), try this.

For 2009 models, this LG should work fine.

In either case, you'll have to pop off the front bezel of the drive for it to fit in the case.

For external drives, pretty much anything modern with a USB 2.0 interface should work.

 

[velocityg4]

Every brand I have ever tried worked fine for me. Just be sure to download a lightscribe driver. http://www.lightscribe.com/downloadsection/mac/index.aspx?id=813

I think the last drive I bought that did not work was a 6.7x Sony SCSI drive I got for a PowerMac 7100/66AV of mine in the mid 90's.

 

[juliancs]

What about this?
http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...spx?path=24ca0d688cf2ae98d7da3ee607cb5340en02

My girlfriend is home in Canada for the holidays so she could pick it up for me (I'm in the UK)

 

[CaptainChunk]

Pioneer is much better and more mac friendly.. LG is what apple puts in the mac pros, hense the model: HL-DT-ST-GH41N - which is a piece of crap.. Want to get a nice sata drive? Look for the Pioneer dvr-218L

LG is crap.
and so is Hitachi - they both own each other.

When you're talking about drives that cost under $25, they're all about the same. I've had Pioneer drives fail in G5s and Mac Pros just as much as ones made by Hitachi/LG. To add to this, the OP was also asking for a drive that supported LightScribe, and Pioneers do not (they use a competing technology called LabelFlash).

And for the record, Hitachi and LG don't OWN each other. They manufacture certain things under a joint venture using the same facilities. For example, LG and Philips have a joint venture to manufacture LCD display panels that go into a lot of computer monitors. Sony and Samsung have a joint venture to manufacturer LCD displays for TVs. And up until Fujitsu's plasma display panel industry folded about 3 years ago, they had a joint venture with Hitachi to manufacture PDPs for TVs and commercial/industrial displays. Manufacturers of commodity items do this quite a bit these days. Building factories dedicated to manufacturing very specific types of electronic components is very expensive.