Is external hardrive ok for dvd burner

Computer Hardware
#1

I am about to buy a dvd burner but am concerned that my present hardrive is not big enough to cope. that means an external hardrive connected by usb.Will usb transfer data fast enough or will it cause problems.Any suggestions welcome

Many Thanks
Islander

#2

It depends on the the hard drive enclosure and controler it uses. In general, while external devices (burners or hard drives to be used with burners) can work with high speed dvd burning, they can be problamatic. Just googleing for benchmarks on an external drive, this is the first I came up with.
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/teacusb2HD/index2.htm
That drive doesn’t seem to be fast enough and could be problamatic with 16x burn.
How big is your current hard drive? You only need about 10 gig of working space for most dvd burning. You could always move some stuff off your main drive to the external and or use the external for storage of dvd relates stuff you are not currently working with? Alternativlly, do your homework and find an enclosure/external (firewire might be best) that can perform fast enough as some won’t.

#3

I use a Maxtor 250gig external on Firewire and can burn at x16 with my Sony 710-UL external also on firewire.

However, if I try to connect via USB2, I get all sort of horrible burns. That is probably due to my USB chip set though.

#4

Spot on. :iagree:

#5

I’ve recently got a Seagate 250GB External with USB2 & it’s works absolutely fine as the source for 16x burning.

#6

I think I would want to buy locally. Then you can try it and benchmark it and see if the particular drive you get can handle the speed. I would think most of the major brand prebuilt ones could but you never know.

#7

i have a wd120jb in an adaptec usb.firewire enclosure. i also have a ximeta netdisk 120 GB

firewire is fine, as is usb on both drives.
network connection on the ximeta is fast enough for 4x

depends on the chipset of the enoclosure and your internal usb as well. if you have multiple usb devices i would suggest firewire since usb bandwidth is based on the CPU and is shared among all usb devices which lowers each devices throughput. firewire is controller based and bandwidth is parallel so no sharing slowdown. firewire cards are very cheap

#8

Thanks for all your help fellas, I see the way to go

Islander