external blu-ray drives

[v604mustangjoe]

Hello,
so i was wondering if there is both software and driver support for an external blu-ray reader/burner. I want to be able to rip a blu-ray and transcode it to 720p atv format as a back-up copy. Also i'd like to be able to back up my time capsule and time machine back ups to blu-rays. From what i've read blu-ray can store up to 50 gigs per dics, so i'd just need 20 discs to back-up my entire media library.

 

[DanielCoffey]

Your best bet for backing up a time machine archive is another external HDD in a caddy - say a 2Gb drive. Use something like Carbon Copy Cloner (free) to make a complete clone of either your boot drive or your Time Machine drive as you see fit. One HDD will take up a comparable amount of room as a stack of writable BDs and avoids the issue of an error on a single BD making the entire archive useless.

EDIT : also the write speed of BDs is very low when compared to a HDD - writing 20 BDs will take you quite some time!

 

[Cave Man]

Just about any drive will work. I bought an LG burner and put it in a BYTECC FW400/USB2 5.25" enclosure. Your enclosure has to have an internal SATA interface to match the drive. You also need Toast to burn Blu-ray discs, most of which are only 25 gb single layer. They'd probably be more economical than 50 gb discs.