Our ancient desktop machine has breathed its last and with it the last ripping cd/dvd drive in the house (except the PS5 – no ripping there). So we are cutting the desktop cord and find ourselves in need of an external drive that will:
Rip CDs
Play DVDs/blu-ray
Not so fussed about ripping DVDs.
Not solely usb 3.0, as we have some laptops still with 2.0
Budget up to £50 for something that comes from a recognisable brand (can see Hitachi do these for example) ideally, if not then a recommendation from the zillions of Chinese makes you’ve never heard of on Amazon.
ATM USB CD/DVD external ripper/player
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Paging @fentonsteve with this unexciting equipment related question.
Have you tried blutacking the CDs to your sunglasses during a solar eclipse?
My laptop is old and creaking but will hopefully see me to the end of Windows 11. I bought a USB 2.0 CD drive when the internal one gave up the ghost. It is painfully slow, possibly because USB 2.0 limits the power to 5V @ 0.5A
I’ll have to go and find it so you can avoid buying one.
I’m not helping much, am I?
Not that you really need, or want, to know: it is a LiteOn SSM-815S half-height CD/DVD drive with a USB to IDE bridge inside the case. IDE, not even SATA. No wonder it is slow.
Elimination is still progress Steve. Surprisingly feisty this thread, that bit of the blog which is less like the Steve Hoffmann boards and more like PCMag.
External DVD and CD drives are fairly easy to pick up in that price range. USB Blu Ray drives from reputable manufacturers tend to cost a little more. You may be able to pick up one in that price range from a Chinese manufacturer with a name that’s seemingly a string of random letters, but whether it will work properly is another matter.
IME the nonsensically-named Chinese kit is no less reliable than some “name” stuff.
My two mini-PCs (Nipogi and Beeline brands) are more reliable (also cheaper and much quieter) than my old Samsung laptop, which used to frequently overheat and either freeze or shut down. My old HP laptop was really noisy in comparison.
I have two external DVD/CD drives, a Samsung which cost about £12 at least 10 years ago and a rather flaky ASUS one that’s only about 5 years old and cost just under £20. I bought the ASUS one when I thought the Samsung drive had reached the end. It later turned out to be a Windows driver issue.
Neither of my drives read BluRay discs, which I don’t need them to, so I can’t recommend you anything, except not to dismiss all Chinese kit out of hand. IIRC the actual transports etc. of CD/DVD/BluRay drives are all made by (or on behalf of – in China) the likes of Hitachi anyway.
USB3 drives will all work fine on USB2. You just won’t get USB3 connection speeds, but you probably won’t notice any difference.
Mike raises a good point: most of the drive hardware is made by a handful of companies and sold onto the OEM market. I have two no-name (OEM) drives in my desktop PC, one is Toshiba and the other is Pioneer.
Of course, there’s more to an external drive unit than just the mechanical drive itself. A bit like how my Citroen ZX car had a Peugeot diesel engine.
In the case of external Blu Ray drives, these manufacturers tend to use old stock drives, with no option to update the firmware. Consequentially they can’t playback recent Blu Ray discs as they lack the relevant decryption key.
….”a Chinese manufacturer with a name that’s seemingly a string of random letters” – sounds like my laptop. OK for about a year, then the battery stopped working. Six months later the keyboard went tonto. I swear the CCP is trying to undermine the West by simply making us go bonkers. It’s situationism writ large.
I have a approx 10yr old ASUS Bluray external drive that has worked flawlessly.
The obit downside to it is that it users two USB-A connectors (to get the extra power). This was not an issue when I used to on the old iMac to rip BD discs, but now I use my MacBook with USB-C ports it means using two dongles which is a bit cumbersome.
As such, I’ve been looking for a USB-C external BD drive. There are a few on the market – I think LG and Pioneer have but on the more expensive side.
A nerdry Engineer asks (the rest of you can look away now): I don’t Mac, so how much current can the MacBook provide from its host port?
All USB 2.0 Type A host ports can source 5V @ 0.5A, so those Y-shaped USB-A leads used two USB-A connectors wired in parallel to get 5V @ 1.0A to the load device.
USB C host ports can source at least 5V @ 1.5A*, so a 1.0A load shouldn’t require two C host ports wired in parallel to power it.
(*) USB-C can also do 5V @ 3A, 20V @ 5A or 48V @ 5V, depending on the cable and the capability of the device(s) at either end.
I believe the current MacBook USB-C ports are 10W (5V/2A).
The current external drive I have uses the Y shaped USB-A connectors and so I need to use USB-C to USB-A dongles to connect it to my MacBook and it does need two ports to work. Hence my desire to swap to one with a single USB-C connector.
Have you considered a hub? When I’m using my MacBook at my desk, a single USB C cable plugs in and takes care of power, monitor and other accessories that require a cable. I am rather lazy though….
Sounds like you could use a different cable with one USB-C plug at the MacBook end? Teaching Granny, etc…