Looking for a external/swappable cdrw/dvd drive for t20

[fr0zenmon]

Any suggestions? ebay sellers? What should i expect to pay? Any important features or flaws i should look for? Do they work on other thinkpad models aswell?

[pianowizard]

What should i expect to pay?

Does the brand matter? And what size do you want? If you don't mind a big (in terms of physical size) drive, you can do what I did. I bought a $26 Sony desktop DVD burner, and put it in a $21 USB external drive case. It's bulky and heavy, but very cheap. I bought both from Geeks.com over a year ago, and the prices have probably gone down since then.

[fr0zenmon]

the laptop, A slide in ibm slim drive. And one workhjorse cheap extrenal drive, like u said. It makes sense. that one size doesnt matter. I just want them to work effortlessly.

[schen]

You could go the ThinkPad route and get one of the external Ultrabay2000s. If you get everything that originally came with it, you get both the USB as well as the PCMCIA interface, then you can use pretty much any UB2K device that you can find in it. It even has a AA battery compartment so you can use it without plugging it in. I seem to remember that, they seem to appear off and on, on ebay for cheap, like less than $20 cheap. The trick will be to make sure you get all the parts with it and not pay too much for shipping. Of course you pay more for the drives themselves, but you can put darned near anything in there.

[fr0zenmon]

there was 1 for $100. and thats crazy. I guess i might get a cheap internal and buy a case. What i need a straightforward, dependable cdrw/dvd+-rw that will keep working. Any specific companies/models to look for?

[furiousmonkey]

I picked up an external usb cd-rw drive from ebay for $50 it was a full sized one, so I took it apart and added a dvd burner to it for a while, that worked out really well but then I put that in my main computer and installed an 80gb hard drive.

Two things for me to get to the point,

1. You can buy external IDE to USB cases and put what ever you want inside.
2. I actually purchased a couple of USB 2.0 PCMCIA cards for both of my thinkpads and you know, I have actually found them really handy, and this increased the speed of what ever I connected to my laptop. Right now I am running a USB wireless network card in one.