Help with externa blu ray writer?

[Soura2112]

External Blu Ray buying tips?
I am looking into an external Blu Ray writer/burner for my Mac Pro and I did google them except everything I read was early 2010, so I am curious if anyone has suggestions that may be new.

Looking for FireWire 800, simple set up, and a good warranty. Though I know I will have to jump through a few hoops to get video to the drive. Besides using it for video I like the idea for using it for storage.


The LaCie drive I looked at had mixed reviews so I am not sure about LaCie. I loved LaCie until my Porsche external HD drive died after 2 years and their warranties are bad, maybe they changed. Granted I have had a Maxtor external HD drive that has died 3 times, at least Maxtor keeps giving me new drives with their 5 year warranty. I know drives don't last forever, but 2 years was pretty bad in my opinion.

Thanks for any info

 

[ActionableMango]

I have no personal experience with Mac blu-ray, but OWC is usually the go-to place for good Mac support. They have many external BD models.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/blu-ray

 

[Makosuke]

I'd second the vote for OWC; their branded hardware isn't perfect (nothing is), but they try very hard to do a good job of Mac support for everything they make or sell. LaCie, I've had mixed experiences with, and after their Mac USB3 card that will ONLY work with their own USB3 drives I lost what little faith in them I had.

You could, of course, just buy the cheapest SATA BD-R drive you can find, stick it in an external case, and buy a copy of Toast, and it'll probably work well enough, but OWC's prices usually aren't that much higher than generic stuff, and you get better support (plus they're a cool company for other reasons).

That said, my read-only BD drive assembled from (relatively) cheap parts from Newegg works fine for reading BDs with nothing additional but BD-ripping software, and works with other discs with no added drivers or software at all (haven't yet gotten any data BDs to test and see if the Finder recognizes them without more software; I'm guessing not).