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General discussion

internal or external DVD burner?

Nov 15, 2004 12:49PM PST

Hello all,

I am considering getting a DVD burner soon, but have a few questions that I hope someone can answer for me first.

I have a Gateway 500XL with a DVD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive. Would it be better to just get an external DVD burner or should I remove the CD-RW drive and install an internal DVD burner (which is cheaper) in its place? If I do the latter, what should I be aware of? Any significant problems/issues? Pros/cons?

In addition, if I do decide to replace the CD-RW drive with a DVD+/-RW drive, can I install the old CD-RW drive in another computer? If so, any issues I should be aware of?

Thanks in advance,
Jason

Discussion is locked

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Re: internal or external DVD burner?
Nov 15, 2004 8:54PM PST

When DVD recorders were hundreds of dollars, I kept the CDRW drive. Now that I pay from 49 to 79 dollars for a DVDRW (all format from 8 to more X DVD speeds) this is no longer an issue. I just fit the DVD and DVDRW pair.

Bob

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Re: internal or external DVD burner?
Nov 16, 2004 10:14AM PST

If you have firewire or or USB 2.0 an external drive would work just dandy but as Rob pointed out there is no need to spend the extra $ unles you will be moving the drive from machine to machine on a regular basis.
I've just bought an NEC 3500 drive which (when the media is readily available) can write +/-R at up to 16x, dual layer at 4x and CD-R at 48x and it's nice and quiet too.
If you're running winXP it should happily plug in and play where you're current CD-RW is living.

Happy burning.