P70: Buying internal or external optical drive?

[digait]

Hello,

I'm about to buy a P70 which will come without an optical drive.

I would prefer an internal one (DVD RW, no Blue Ray).
Apart from an original Lenovo drive, what else fits (and is good)?

The alternative - an USB drive ... ?
Personally I don't like such cable-attached "add-ons" but maybe
that there USB drives which are technically better, more reliable than an internal one?

Thanks for your help!

[w0qj]

Greetings!

We don't have P70, so here are our general ThinkPad buying advice:

1) P70 with no DVD drive?
Make sure there is no "hole" where there was supposed to have DVD drive.
Otherwise your P70 would literally have a "hold" where internal DVD drive was supposed to be.

Other options, if these are still available (not sure), to help cover up your hole:
~Up to 512GB SSD with Bay Adapter Travel Bezel
www.lenovo.com/hk/en/laptops/thinkpad/t ... 2TP2WPWP70

2) External DVD Read/Write Drive is a more flexible solution, especially if you have other notebook computers to share it with. IMHO.
We used this ThinkPad one and it's very reliable and light-weight:
www.lenovo.com/hk/en/accessories-and-mo ... 4XA0E97775

3) If your P70 really has "hole" where internal DVD drive was supposed to be, personally I would try to buy the OEM internal DVD drive (new or refurbished) just to cover up the hole.
But it's not cost effective, especially if/when this OEM DVD drive breaks down years down the road.

Good luck!

[farmall]

Externals are the by far most versatile way to go and it's very low effort to rip optical media to store piles of DVDs on a much smaller hard disc leaving the originals safe for the future.

Rather than seeking compactness in external peripherals (which I only use at home in desktop mode anyway) I look for quality and the good old full height DVD burners (Plextor, Sony etc) in external cases offer the higher quality desktop drives in an enclosure you can use with any drive if one fails. Unfortunately the old cdfreaks forum is dead but a bit of searching will find your options. When burning I write at slowest speed available for best quality (I've been writiing bootable CDs since 1999) so speed doesn't matter. On Windows I use trial versions of CDRwin because the speed limits are of no importance, but there are plenty of choices.