Thinkpads Forum

When I purchased my X61s I failed to take into account the 60-70 DVD-Rs I've accumulated over the years. While I don't constantly need for a drive to be connected, I will want to swap media in and out and using another computer or network connection is not going to be an option as I'm leaving the country for a while.

So I'm wondering which route I should go to obtain an optical drive. I already have a monster 5.25 16x Liteon DVD burner in an external USB 2.0 enclosure, but I want something slimmer.

For $40 I can get this 8X no-name drive:
http://www.pcdirect.com/product.asp?pro ... =DW-ISD081

along with a $20 enclosure:
http://www.centrix-intl.com/details.asp?productid=433

Is there a better deal out there? Should I be considering the Ultrabase?

I don't know if there are any cheaper solutions, but I was thinking about buying a slim external DVD drive for my X61s as well (or atleast using the SATA drive in my desktop with a USB converter temporarily).

If you do happen to go with your above mentioned plan, please post your results as I am interested in knowing if the drive is able to power itself off of USB power only or if you *must*attach a power converter (which is large and heavy).

I had an external 2.5" ATA HD enclosure which had a power connector on the back but I never had the need to use it because USB power was enough - and that saved me from carrying another power brick.

Thanks in advance.

An eBay seller has a solution for $49.99 + $21.99 shipping. The drive inside is a M a t s u s h i t a (Panasonic) DVD-RAM UJ-841S. The case has come to some buyers with an IBM logo on it (but not an actual IBM product) but other buyers have just a plain black case so YMMV.

LINK to eBay store

Thanks to 'figuerc' for the original post here:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... %2A+dvd%2A

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0142870237

I bought this. It's not a slim drive but it's cheaper.

Moderator edit: Shortened URL to prevent scrolling

spune wrote:http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0142870237

I bought this. It's not a slim drive but it's cheaper.

Is it bus powered? It doesn't look like it.

Regardless, I'd say using a slimline USB in place of an UltraBase is a smart idea. Saves on both weight and money.

(Since I already have a drive, I'm just looking for a case, or perhaps a 50-44pin IDE adapter as I already have a 44pin IDE-USB adapter.)

If you think you might ever want to have a fixed desktop station, for attaching external keyboard/mouse/monitor, I'd just get the Ultrabase. Otherwise, a slim USB burner would be a better option, even though I personally hate external burners.

For mobile portability reasons I some months ago needed some sort of light-weight to carry around external DVD-burner. I looked around for external 5.25" slim-line cases on the market and then decided for a slightly greater flexibility to take a compact case which offers USB, FireWire and headphone conectors.

So I bought an external slim-line case which has:

- an USB port
- a Firewire port
- a direct Headphone port
- a power connector port (in cases where some notebooks don't offer enough own bus power on their USB ports)

Then I bought a slim-line DVD-burner and hosted the burner inside the above mentioned case. I selected a modern Samsung slim-line slot-in burner with lightscribe support, since this one offered everything I need (DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, DVD-DL, DVD-RAM and so on...) and since I got it very cheap. - But in general there are a bunch of slim-line DVD drives available from vendoes like NEC, Pioneer, Teac, Samsung, Sony, Plextor, Panasonic etc. which all would fit into a coresponding slim-line case.

All in all together I payed nearly ~€90 for this light-weight flexible external DVD-burner solution. Here are some pics of the burner, which is plugged to a desktop notebook-server:










One can of course also find a bunch of ready-made, partly cheaper solutions on the market, where the USB cases are black and thus would fit in color to the Thinkpads.

purchasing the slim line drive & enclosure seems like a good cheap solution.

is it a matter of simply sliding the drive into the enclosure and everything is ready for use? is there any soldering or other assembly required? in politicorific's link to the case, it looks like there are some extra bits in one of the pics. what about drivers & software for burning DVD's etc? also would these things be rugged enough to be carried around in a backpack on a daily basis?

thanks.

you usually just open a few screws and pop it in...

on a side note, some arent all that expensive even already put together:
http://centrix-intl.com/details.asp?productid=1825

grimm01 wrote:...is it a matter of simply sliding the drive into the enclosure and everything is ready for use? is there any soldering or other assembly required? in politicorific's link to the case, it looks like there are some extra bits in one of the pics. what about drivers & software for burning DVD's etc? also would these things be rugged enough to be carried around in a backpack on a daily basis?
...

Nearly all slim-line cases do come ready with some small screws and little brackets, for mounting the drive into the case to fixed position. Further the cases have build-in a little board with the electronics and one flat-cable connector, which you connect to the back of the drive (it's one standard connector which fits all drives). Mounting/placing an optical drive into a external case is pretty easy and a job ob 5 minutes.

There are different material cases on the market, beside a bunch of plastic cases you can also find some good full aluminium/metal cases, like:

- MaPower KC51S

- Raidsonic Icy Box IB-540U-B-BL

And as said before, there are also cheaep ready assebled external slim-line optical drive solutions available from a bunch of resellers, ebay and so on.

For Windows XP and Vista you don't need any drivers for the external case, they will be recognized automatically by the OS. Only for older Windows NT etc. you would need drivers, which one usually finds on a little CD which accopanies the external enclosure/case. - Burning software, like Nero etc. comes often already bundled with some optical drives, or you can take your own already available software here.

For a daily to be carried around basis, an light full metal/aluminium case should be ideal, these are robust enough for the job. But most plastic cases should do it equally good here.

spune wrote:http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0142870237

I bought this. It's not a slim drive but it's cheaper.

I've bought that one too.
Came in DOA, with broken bezel clips.
Could be a bad apple though. The seller is nice and responsive.
I'm getting my money back.

aphex wrote:you usually just open a few screws and pop it in...

on a side note, some arent all that expensive even already put together:
http://centrix-intl.com/details.asp?productid=1825

I bought one of the usb DVD drives off centrix-intl.com and just popped in a DVD movie to test it out and windows media player told me that a compatible DVD decoder is not installed. What does it mean, and what can I download for free?

WinDVD is what ships with the ThinkPads equipped with DVD drives, but that's obviously not what you want.

I use VLC in situations like this - it comes with a Free DVD codec (IIRC, it's libdvdcss, but I might be wrong.)

bhtooefr wrote:WinDVD is what ships with the ThinkPads equipped with DVD drives, but that's obviously not what you want.

I use VLC in situations like this - it comes with a Free DVD codec (IIRC, it's libdvdcss, but I might be wrong.)

thanks. i just dl'd VLC and it works great.

grimm01:

What cables are you using with the drive? Does the drive function with power from the USB or do you need to give it extra power?

I'm thinking it will have enough power from the USB for reading discs, but will need an extra cable to write discs.

Please let me know as I'm debating whether or not to buy this drive.

Thanks!

Antioch wrote:grimm01:

What cables are you using with the drive? Does the drive function with power from the USB or do you need to give it extra power?

I'm thinking it will have enough power from the USB for reading discs, but will need an extra cable to write discs.

Please let me know as I'm debating whether or not to buy this drive.

Thanks!

Hey Antioch,

I got the Pioneer slot loaded DVD drive: http://www.centrix-intl.com/details.asp?productid=1825

It came with 2 sets of cables: the USB cable and another power cable that can be powered using USB or PS2 ports, a diskette with drivers (do people still use those), and a useless manual telling you how to use the diskette. I have Vista Business and that already had the drivers loaded.

So far I have been using the USB cable alone to listen to cd's and watch a test DVD. I have not tried to burn anything yet, but I figure both cables will be needed to burn discs.

The Pioneer has been fine so far but it is kinda loud. The slot loading is not as smooth as I thought. I expected it to operate like a car cd player, but on this unit you have to shove the disc in a fair amount before the player "catches" the disc, then it just grabs it from you. Otherwise the playback has been fine.

Also, I never considered what would happen if a disc stuck in the unit. So just for that reason alone I would suggest a tray loaded model.

I used that case for external drives on both my T41 and T42. I never needed two cables.

I believe in Device Manager you can see how much power the drive wants from the USB port. It'll almost certainly say something under 500 mA - that's the max for one port, and USB devices should request all the power they're going to need. If it requests more than 500 mA, it'll just say that it needs to be plugged in. (Note: most USB power devices do NOT request the power, they just assume it's there, because it would take a LOT more logic, and it would have to register with the PC as some sort of device. That can cause problems if it tries to pull 500 mA (which is what should be there on a powered USB port) and it's not there.)

Also, look on the bottom of the drive - sometimes it says the max power utilization of the drive.

My guess is, the second cable is for when you end up plugging the drive into a non-powered hub, such as one in a keyboard.

bhtooefr wrote:I believe in Device Manager you can see how much power the drive wants from the USB port. It'll almost certainly say something under 500 mA - that's the max for one port, and USB devices should request all the power they're going to need. If it requests more than 500 mA, it'll just say that it needs to be plugged in. (Note: most USB power devices do NOT request the power, they just assume it's there, because it would take a LOT more logic, and it would have to register with the PC as some sort of device. That can cause problems if it tries to pull 500 mA (which is what should be there on a powered USB port) and it's not there.)

Also, look on the bottom of the drive - sometimes it says the max power utilization of the drive.

My guess is, the second cable is for when you end up plugging the drive into a non-powered hub, such as one in a keyboard.

thanks for the info. do you have any recommendations for DVD burning software (free preferrably)?

The machines at least used to ship with Sonic's burning software, but I didn't get a look at what they ship with now.

For free burning software... there is support built into XP and Vista for burning CDs and DVDs (IIRC on the DVDs,) but it's just for saving files.

Alternately, Demosten's CDR Tools Front End is a repackaging of cdrtools, a popular Linux CD burning app, for Windows, along with a simple GUI.

Also, look at the ISO Recorder, it's pretty simple and adds basic copying functionality to Windows.

Or, just shell out for Nero and have fun - last time I used it, which was a while back, it was pretty much the best.

im torn between a fast desktop model or a portable one... I really can't forsee myself ever needing it outside my house so I may just save $30 and go with a desktop model thats twice as fast.