Hello,
I have a Internal Desktop DVD writer, but my computer is busted. I also have a good laptop, and want to connect the writer to the Laptop. I have seen connections for Laptop drives to Desktop, but not the other way around. Can anyone help me?
Cheers,
Ian.
Hi there,
I think you could use a USB 2 IDE Switch and connect it to your laptop via USB. Such a switch could be found @
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dllViewItem&category=14845&item=5187018720&rd=1
Sorry, this is the site of a german Ebay-Powerseller, but i think you could easily find tha same product from another trader.
Depending on your laptop’s capabilities, this could be very well possible. If your laptop has either a USB 2.0 port (USB 1.1 only can handle a 12mbit connection; it would be possible to write DVDs using USB 1.1 but that’s far from ideal), a FireWire port or a free PCCard socket for an USB/FireWire adapter card, it’s possible.
Get an external enclosure that can do USB and/or FireWire (depending on your needs), put the writer in it, attach it to the laptop and the rest should be easy. The same goes for external harddrives btw.
Liek Dee says, you can get a cheap USB external caddy (5.25" version) which will accomodate the burner and let you use it completely independantly of the PC. Then when you get the PC fixed, you can just use the external drive on that too.
You should still be able to burn DVDs on a USB1.1 link, but don’t be shocked if 2x or 4x is the fastest possible.
USB2.0 is 40x faster than USB1.0 !!!
(You can also get a PCMCIA USB2.0 card, which might go some way to solve the issue… but depends how much you’re wanting to spend :p)
Check out the VERY long “External housings” thread in “Recording hardware” - many of these cases have issues that may or may not be fixed by update.
Some pls post the link if they find the article. I am too lazy to spend more than 10 seconds looking and the search function yields no results 
It’s in the “read first’s” at the top of that section, or would you like someone to come and type it in for you as well 
I use this:
with great success.
For hard drive connects, butgt it is also supposed to support optical drives as well.
At $60 it is twice the cost of an external enclosure. And I think he is in the UK, home of the Oxford 911 chip.