portable dvd burner

Howdy all,
I'm looking for a portable USB dvd burner for my toshiba but I am having trouble finding one that is bus powered. Is such a thing even avilable? if so is it any good. Any suggestions/advice would be much appreciated.

Regrads UBA

 

From what I have heard, no there is none. But even if you do find one that is USB powered, I would assume it would be extremely slow (probably 1x or less).

---

HP nx7010 DU259A: Pentium-M 1.6GHz, 2x256MB RAM, 60GB 7200RPM HDD, 64MB Radeon 9200, 15.4" WXGA, XP Pro.

 

Yeah, you're probably not going to find a USB model that is powered by the bus, that would kill your battery and as marcog pointed out, it probably would be limited to a slow burn speed. If you do find a USB capable model, go for USB 2.0. Better yet, go for FireWire or PC-Card interface.

 

What Do you mean!?[:0] There are a lot of them...did you even TRY to search?? most of them can run off your Ltop battery too.
Try these out:
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10103
http://www.kanotechnologies.com/prod/K421S-WM.cfm
http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/product/detail/0,,2076_103674852_23143977,00.html

...And skip Usb and go Firewire. Its faster and just better.[^]

 

I wouldn't trust those products below as they are not entirely clear as to how powered is delivered. If you look at the LaCie product page, it states it's powered by the FireWire bus at the top but towards the bottom, states an AC adaptor is needed.

My understanding of FireWire is there are 3 different connectors, 4, 6, and 9 pin. The 4-pin is just the BUS interface and would require a seperate power source. The 6-pin provides BUS and power and would be the 'total' solution. I am not familiar with the 9-pin and wonder if it's associated with the next generation of the FireWire standard. Most laptops only come with a 4-pin connection which would supply the BUS connection, but no power. So the device you're connecting would still need an adapter.

Given this, I believe you still would need some type of additional power source b/c of the 4-pin config on most laptops. Quite honestly, it makes sense. Given the power requirements of burners, why zap a battery burning one or two disks?

 

I wouldn't trust them either. What I think they mean at the bottom is that with Sony Vaio notebooks in particular, a power supply is required.

4 pin: 1394a without power
6 pin: 1394a with power (but very limited)
9 pin: 1394b (newer Firewire) with power (but very limited)

So you would need a 6 pin or 9 pin Firewire port to run off Firewire power, which most laptops don't have (they have 4 pin). But if you run it without a power supply, I would presume the speed would decrease dramatically. Just think about it for a second, when using the laptop's internal DVD-ROM to play back a DVD, the battery time drops by half. And that's at 2.4x or 4x! Now obviously Firewire (and USB even less so) would not be able to supply nearly enough power to burn at the same speed as an internal drive.

It's not so much using up the battery of the laptop as USB/Firewire being able to provide the power. There are even problems when it comes to using an external hard drive that's too large.

And anyway, $239 for a 4x burner is a rip-off. I just ordered a 16x NEC 3500A for 60 pounds and an enclosure for 40 pounds. That's 100 pounds (half the price) for a drive that's 4 times as fast, about twice the size and that requires a power supply! Those 4x burners will be able to burn a DVD in about 20 minutes. The 3500A can burn in 6 minutes. You decide. I've decided for myself already.

---

HP nx7010 DU259A: Pentium-M 1.6GHz, 2x256MB RAM, 60GB 7200RPM HDD, 64MB Radeon 9200, 15.4" WXGA, XP Pro.

 

Well, Gentmen I stand corrected.
There does not seem to be a self powering firewire dvd burner drive existent. But you raise a bigger question: Is it worth it? All drives are motors and eat power like mad pacman's[} ]

I wound up getting an a.c. powered external plug in firewire drive. myself. I use it, but not as much as I thought I would. Don't get me wrong, for backing up movies, video files, vast storehouses of music and pictures it's beautiful. And now I can take along my storehouse
wherever I might go and still have plenty of harddrive space. But, that's it. At this very moment, it's at home...collecting dust. This is NOT a must have device for most people, just whats hot right now and all the rage. Mostly a CD/R is much more usefully over all.

anddd...I'm spent.(2 cents).[xx(]

 

Check out Addonics Pocket series. Tested and verified to run completely off laptop power.
http://www.addonics.com/products/external_cd/

You can find a Cnet review of the original 1x model from a year and a half ago at http://reviews.cnet.com/Addonics_Pocket_DVD-RRW/4505-3212_7-21136320.html but their latest model is 4x DVD, 24x CD, or something like that.

I recently bought a TC1000 for when I'm on the road and I'm thinking about getting one of these, not so much for the burning, but if your going to buy an external drive, why not make it DVD capable in case you need it? Besides, I've got an auto/air power converter for the tablet that has a USB power port, so if I get this drive I can not only power it from the tablet when away from a power source, I can plug both into the power converter when in a car or plane.

 

"*Addonics has successfully tested the Pocket DVD/CDRW using Direct power from PCMCIA, USB or Firewire ports on various brands of Notebook and Desktop computers. However, Addonics does not guarantee the Pocket DVD/CDRW to work with power directly from the computers as the power from the connecting ports varies from different system manufacturers....
Yea! Yea! Ok, but then:

"only the PCMCIA mode can provide direct power to the drive. However, operating in PCMCIA model reduces the performance of the drive and results in lower frame rate in playing DVD movie."

I have never heard of that before[B)]. I've used PCMICA portable dvd players before in my older machines...and never had that problem.
Mmmm...thoughs anyone?

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by AdvidG

 

Sabastian:

Actually, I think CD-R burning is almost a MUST have feature. That's pretty bad that some of it's functions gets knocked out on battery power. I would not buy this product.

As for DVD: Just'Divx' it. This will turn your DVDs into compressed movie files. No motors, no fuss, no mess.
There are freeware programs to accomplish this too.

And as 'Marcog' and 'Big Calhoun' hinted at....If you don't got it built in.... just keep the DVD-R burning where it belongs.....at HOME. It's cheaper smarter and, just sexier.[:I]