Two questions (Lightscribe; maintaining speed)

[c073186]

Hi I have two questions, completely unrelated to one another:

1. I want to get a Lightscribe DVD burner. Is there one that is particularly good or are they all pretty much the same?

2. Is there anything that I can or should do to keep my Mac Pro running as fast as it was when I first got it? Is there anything to do without installing extra software within Mac OS to keep it running fast?

Thanks
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[beatsme]

Hi I have two questions, completely unrelated to one another:

1. I want to get a Lightscribe DVD burner. Is there one that is particularly good or are they all pretty much the same?

2. Is there anything that I can or should do to keep my Mac Pro running as fast as it was when I first got it? Is there anything to do without installing extra software within Mac OS to keep it running fast?

Thanks
-

I have a Samsung in my old G4 that I'm pretty happy with:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151141

not terribly expensive and works really well.

as far as keeping your machine running fast, just try to avoid bloat i.e. don't install more apps than you need, and don't leave too many files on the HD. More files=longer search times for the HD=slower performance.

EDIT: I noticed in the link that this item is discontinued. Click on similar items to see what else they have. My apologies :-(

 

[c073186]

I thought you could not use a SATA drive for the optical drives in the Mac Pro...? Don't you have to use IDE or PATA (speaking of which, what's the difference)?

Would this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151155) be a good drive?

 

[CWallace]

I thought you could not use a SATA drive for the optical drives in the Mac Pro...? Don't you have to use IDE or PATA (speaking of which, what's the difference)?

The drives that ship from Apple use the IDE/PATA interface. However, the Mac Pro does have additional SATA cable connectors on the motherboard and these can be used to run SATA optical drives (though the cable run can be a pain).

IDE and PATA are two terms that describe same thing. PATA stands for Parallel AT Attachment (as opposed to SATA's Serial AT Attachment). Read all about it at Wikipedia.