DVD-ROM for PB

[themadchemist]

I'm thinking about getting a Powerbook with a superdrive and I might want to back up my DVDs. Thus, I was considering buying an external DVD-ROM drive so that I don't have to make a disk image and burn that to DVD.

I want something cheap and reliable. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Alternately, I haven't done much with making disk images and then burning to disc...Is it as much of a pain as it sounds like it is? Or is it worth the saved bucks to handle the minor inconvenience.

 

[jamdr]

I backup a fair number of CDs, and do so by making disc images and then burning them to CD. This takes a while (3-4 minutes to make the image and then 5 minutes to burn). Of course with DVDs, the process will take quite a bit longer. I don't think many places sell just a DVD-ROM drive anymore. Your best bet is probably to get a used one off eBay or buy an internal IDE DVD-ROM drive and then put it in external Firewire or USB 2.0 case (shouldn't be more than $70-100 for both).

However, I'm not sure you could just burn a DVD while reading from a DVD-ROM drive. I could be wrong (hopefully someone will correct me if I am), but I don't think the throughput would be great enough while reading the DVD to burn it at the same time. In that case, the only solution would be to first create an image and then burn it. Anyone have any experience with this?

 

[live4ever]

You will have to make a disc image or at least save the dvd as a temp file on your hard drive (and burn with Toast).

So I would suggest a fast external DVD-R (8x) if you have lots of DVDs to backup, otherwise the Superdrive will work fine.