OT: disk drive recommendations?

[daker13]

I recently bought a new MacBook, my first in the era of no disk drive laptops. I actually do use the disk drive a fair amount, especially to burn cds. On the bright side, disk drives are cheap, but I have now bought two well-reviewed USB disk drives and neither one is showing up on my desktop. They both seem flimsy and have short cords. The Apple disk drive isn't supposed to be too hot either.

Can anyone recommend a decent disk drive, especially for an Apple user? I don't mind spending a little more for something that actually works. Thanks.

[Spdntrxi]

if you mean outside of the SSD that is in your MacBook... I always use Western Digital drives as in a passport drive.

[Spaghetti Legs]

I have the Apple drive (SuperDrive?) but don’t use it very much. Never had a problem with it. I’m sure there’s some software/driver issue with using a non Apple compatible one.

[Veloo]

To clarify, did you get a CD/DVD drive that is not mounting/ showing up on your Mac desktop?
Are you looking for an external hard drive or CD/DVD drive?

How big of a hard drive do you have in your Macbook?

[daker13]

To clarify, did you get a CD/DVD drive that is not mounting/ showing up on your Mac desktop?
Are you looking for an external hard drive or CD/DVD drive?

How big of a hard drive do you have in your Macbook?

Yes, not showing up, glitchy, generally not working as smoothly as I'm used to, freezing, disks won't eject, cd drives seem cheap, etc. This is two drives I'm talking about. I want to burn cd-quality cds from FLAC, WAV, AIFF music files for the most part. A cd/DVD Drive, not an external hd, and my MacBook has 256gb hard drive.

[Veloo]

OK, so not looking to backup your internal HD.

A friend of mine is also looking for one but hasn't found yet.
He sent me this link.
https://www.igeeksblog.com/best-cd-dvd-drives-for-mac/

You may want to do a search on your make and model of drives and see who else is not getting their mac to recognize them as well.

I have a Western Digital My Passport 2 TB external drive and every now and then it doesn't get detected by my 7 year old Macbook. I saw that others had the same issue.

[paredown]

Not using it on a Mac, except occasionally, but we bought a portable Asus CD/DvD (USB connection) and it has worked flawlessly on everything I have plugged it into. It uses 2 USB ports

This looks like the newer version (ours is silver):
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-ZenDrive-SDRW-08U7M-U-BLK-AS/dp/B01A27IUUM/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=asus+cd+dvd&qid=1573213993&s=sporting-goods&sr=1-2-catcorr

[daker13]

Thanks for the recommendations, I'm checking these out. From the reviews I read it seems a lot of Mac users have problems with disk drives not being recognized...

[charliedid]

I recently bought a new MacBook, my first in the era of no disk drive laptops. I actually do use the disk drive a fair amount, especially to burn cds. On the bright side, disk drives are cheap, but I have now bought two well-reviewed USB disk drives and neither one is showing up on my desktop. They both seem flimsy and have short cords. The Apple disk drive isn't supposed to be too hot either.

Can anyone recommend a decent disk drive, especially for an Apple user? I don't mind spending a little more for something that actually works. Thanks.

These folks are super solid. Have not used that drive but have purchased a number of things (SSD recently) and they are excellent.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/LG/P60NS50/

[deechee]

Did you try Apple's Superdrive? https://www.apple.com/ca/shop/product/MD564LL/A/apple-usb-superdrive

My dad had one at some point. The only trick is... the apple logo faces the bottom. It took my dad days to find out the drive was upside down. Talk about bad design.

Is your new macbook with four usb-c ports? If so, I imagine you're using a hub to connect non usb-c drives. Is it powered? I know my wife had problems with the crappy hub her work provided with her hp x360. Try a powered hub if you can. I don't have enough power with the useless Apple dongles so I have to plug things into my monitors...

https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-usb-c-hubs-and-docks/

[ultraman6970]

Op... get any USB external DVDrw drive, anything will do what you want.

[fkelly]

Typed "cd capacities versus usb thumb drives" into Google and got this:

Flash drives, which give you better portability than CDs, come in capacities of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64 GB, whereas CDs range anywhere from 700 to 800 MB, which is less than 1 GB.

Because I was going to suggest that so-called thumb drives might be a much better alternative these days to burning cd's.

I recently bought two 32g flash drives on Amazon for $20. That would fill than 60 cd's. More capacity and more convenient and more compatible.

consider alternatives ...

[ultraman6970]

Well he was asking for a drive and for what i understood he needed to read cds, I imagine he has a lot of them moving around with information, movies and stuff... even if you want to move that to a flash drive or any other type of memory type of drive he will need an external CD/DVD drive to read the disks.

If that the case any USB DVD r/w will do what he wants to do.

Clearly technology is leaving cds and dvds out but as in his case if you have a lot of those discs, you will need a drive to read them.

[fkelly]

in his case if you have a lot of those discs, you will need a drive to read them.

Yes, you are right about that part. In my house we have one working CD drive left. If I need the data on a cd somewhere else I just go to that computer and copy it onto the network.

Might almost be worth it to copy ALL your old cd's on a one time basis and then plan on going without cd's from there on out. But yes, maybe he needs a working one for the transition.

[ultraman6970]

I have so many spindles with stuff, u guys cant imagine...sure many of the guys here have the same... boxes with spindles of junk that havent been read in centuries :P

[daker13]

Yes, I wouldn't use cd's for data storage, I back up to a Time Machine, to the cloud, and also use usb sticks... but I do need cd burning capabilities and so that's why I was asking about a cd/DVD Drive. I would use the apple one, but there are mixed reports about it... and with all of them. I still use cd's for music (in addition to vinyl) and in fact I'm in the market for a new CD player, will probably get a transport and DAC.

A MacBook Air is indeed nice and light, but it feels weird not to have a cd drive in there, and I get music files from friends and from Bandcamp and I've been surprised by how badly I need a decent CD burner...

[572cv]

Lots of good advice, but to the original question... I have a samsung SE218 portable dvd writer. I use it sparingly, but it has connected fine, operated fine.