Recommendations for external BD-R burning drive (1 Viewer)

[Josh Steinberg]

I have a MacBook Pro with a dead optical drive. Rather than getting it repaired (I’m waaaaay out of warranty), I’d like to take the opportunity to get an external drive that can burn CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays. Preferably something that connects via USB or FireWire and can be run with my existing Toast Titanium software.

Any recommendations?

 

[Clinton McClure]

I’ve always used Lite-On optical drives (internal and external) and had really good luck. A lot of people recommend drives made by Buffalo but I’ve never personally used them. My obvious recommendation would be to replace the dead internal drive with an internal Blu-ray drive and save the hassle of messing around with an external device, but I understand not everyone likes to crack open their MacBook.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It's a ten year old MacBook Pro - I'm hesitant to crack it open at this point since it's well past its warranty period, and who knows whether or not a current internal drive would even fit the available space. Seems much neater to just have an external drive that I can plug into the USB port.

The other advantage to that would be, Apple no longer includes optical drives in any of their laptops. While I'd love for my MacBook Pro to last forever, I doubt that's in the cards. If I have a portable external drive and my current laptop fails at some point, I can continue to use the drive on a future new laptop.

 

[Clinton McClure]

Both excellent points.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I bought this Pioneer slim drive for my son ~1-1/2 year ago...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OD39P6A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_JTIlCb20J20JY

Was well recommended at the time... and probably not much has changed w/ the tech since then I think.

Not sure my son's ever burned any discs w/ it as he wanted it mainly for watching movies and installing/accessing whatever still comes on disc, so can't attest to that... but you can probably find plenty of reviews and comments for this drive, so...

Only thing about such slim external drives is they do vibrate quite a bit in use and make corresponding rumbling noise... not exactly great for watching movies unless you're wearing closed headphones.

Oh... and yeah, I intentionally went w/ clamshell loading instead of slot loading as I'm just not a fan of slot loading at all... though I suppose slot loading mechanism might yield less vibration...

One other thing. Since it's apparently still working fine for my son (at least for read access anyway), its durability can't be half bad -- my son isn't exactly great at caring for his stuff, so...

_Man_

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Thanks! That's very helpful!

 

[Sam Posten]

Buffalo

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Buffalo?