External DVD/CD Drive suggestions?

[iphone1105]

Hey all. I do a fair bit of DVD ripping of my personal collection for iTunes and ATV watching. I just got an Air, used to have a Macbook. What external drive are you all using to rip/burn/play dvd's? I've been searching myself, but figured I'd turn to all the good folks here!

Thanks

 

[costabunny]

I find the Samsung Bus powered ones to work nicely and can be found for as little as £20 on amazon (I guess thats $30 or less)

 

[Boyd01]

Also interested in this, was going to start a thread myself in fact. I had the Apple DVD drive with my 2011 MBA but never used it so I gave it to a friend. Just recently I started ripping my large DVD collection and wished I hadn't done that, LOL.

But it is working out OK as I setup my 2008 15" MBP as a station to do this while my MBA is free for everything else. That machine still has 10.5.8 which limits the software choices though, and of course 2.4ghz core 2 duo it is much slower.

I am not really looking for the cheapest solution. Almost went out and bought another Apple drive. What else is out there? How about drives that also read Blu-ray? Are there drives with USB 3 interfaces? Would it even matter on a slow device like DVD?

Are there compatibility issues if third party drives are used for things like software installation? There was a thread here about problems installing Windows from DVD, and the OP claimed the solution was that the drive had to be connected to the left USB port on the MBA and not the right port (or something crazy like that).

 

[Acorn]

I got this drive. seems to work great ripping everything. runs on a single usb

Samsung