I'm looking to get an external CDR drive (preferably firewire, and even more preferably firewire & usb) and wanted to see if there was one made that gets its power over the interface cable and doesn't require an additional power supply.

Does anyone know of one? I'd prefer to get one of those sort that has a normal IDE drive inside it so I could swap it out for a hard drive on occasion, or just an external enclosure so I can definitely do that, but it's possible that only the small laptop-oriented ones will get power the way I want.

I don't think it's going to be very likely to find one that could connect to a desktop internal CDR drive and still use USB power. My Toshiba drive's specification lists it as needing 760mA on the 5V line when burning. It also needs 12V to power it's mechanism. USB can only supply 500mA per port so you'll exceed it on the drive alone.

No idea how much power a firewire port can supply. From what I've seen, external CDR drives all need you to drag a wall wart along with you.

My Dell Lattitude X200 came with an external CD-RW/DVD Rom drive. It is just a firewire device with no external power connector. The actual drive mechanism is a laptop drive though, so I'm sure it takes way less power than a desktop drive. I'm also sure it would be way more expensive.

The drive is model # SEM-Q10E
Dell part # 9R562-A00

Good point with the power. Hadn't done the math, as it were.

It also occurs to me how much I'd like both Firewire and USB. So I'm thinking about this, plus a real drive. Can USB 2.0 devices work on USB 1.0 ports?

Can USB 2.0 devices work on USB 1.0 ports?

Yes.

All of the USB2.0 enclosures I've seen are backward compatible with USB1.1. No idea if this is actually part of the USB2.0 standard or just a feature.
The system requirements page for that drive lists "USB 1.0, USB 1.1, USB 2.0" so I'm assuming that mean it works

Be aware if you've got a fast drive then it won't be able to burn at full speed when using USB1.1.

It took me a while to find but an IEEE1394 port can supply 8V - 40V at 1.5A max (roughly that). It's plenty for a slimline CDR drive so long as you're not chaining it.

I didn't know the newer Dell's had 6 pin IEEE1394 sockets. Mine has the Sony style 4 pin ones. Where are they located?

The Lattitude X200 is actually a rebadged Samsung Q10. So, my laptop may not follow all of Dell's conventions but there is a single 6-pin firewire port on the left side.

Okay, I'm being super-indecisive here. Someone help me out.

Here's what I want:

• An external CD-ROM that can connect to both my Windows desktop and my Apple laptop. The Windows desktop has FireWire & USB2. The Apple has FireWire and USB1. All other things being equal, I'd prefer if it had both FireWire and USB
  
• Speed isn't terribly important. The slowest ones out there seem to be fast enough for me.
  
• At the same time, the transfer rate for USB1 is likely to be too slow and therefore the Apple's specs require FireWire.
  
• It'd be very nice if it got power from the data link and didn't require an external power supply.
  
• I need CD writing software for both computers. I'd rather not pay for full retail versions when they often come with. I'd prefer Nero for the PC and I have no experience with Mac software.

Right now, I'm leaning toward the LaCie Pocket FireWire CD-RW and the SmartDisk FireWire Portable CD-R/W. They both require no external power supply, are 24-10-24 drives and are FireWire-only. But neither comes with Nero. (The LaCie may not come with Windows software at all; the MacMall site claims it does, but the LaCie site doesn't.)

There's also the Kanguru Slim CDRW which can support both FireWire and USB2, but it's unclear if I have to buy extra stuff. It's also unclear what software comes with it. Actually, it looks like I'd have to spend $40 for a USB2 attachment and $60 for a FireWire attachment on top of an already expensive unit.

My other idea is to buy a universal USB2/FireWire enclosure, like the ADS Dual Link Drive Kit (which I linked before), plus a regular IDE CDRW drive. The drawbacks here are that it'd require an external power supply, which isn't really too bad, plus I can't seem to find a drive that comes with both PC and Mac software, regardless of what versions, and buying the software by itself is quite expensive. (And, yes, I want to do more than just burn music from iTunes.) This would allow me to potentially put a hard drive in the case for sneakernetting large amounts of data. But the only person I'm liable to do this with only has USB1 on his computer (incidentally making USB2 irrelevant for immediate purposes). I suppose I could get a FireWire card for him for $30 or so, but then we'd have to deal with Linux compatibility with it and I can find no real data, plus, it starts to add up in cost. It'd almost be as easy to shut down computers and plug in raw IDE devices than mess with pluggable media.

The only remaining idea is to get a heavyweight FireWire CD-RW drive, but whether or not I could swap in a hard drive would pretty much be a crap shoot. But, again, that may not be a huge concern. Plus it would add the requirement for a power adapter. It would write faster, as would the above solution, but 3.5 minutes versus 1.5 minutes isn't a huge deal. It's not like I'm going to be using it 24/7. This is probably the cheapest option, though.

I think I'm leaning towards one of the dedicated slim CD-RWs, as I'd like to be able to pull it out and just go. I guess the biggest thing that concerns me is the software. Does Easy CD suck as much as it used to? Does anyone have any thoughts on Mac software? For that matter, is there anything free for either OS? I'm happy with mkisofs and cdrecord, if they'll work.

Sorry for the big wad of indecision, but you know how it goes sometimes.

If you get an enclosure with a separate supply, get one that has the standard 3 pin IEC power connector. That way you could buy some cheap cables and leave one by each computer. I bought an enclosure that has a custom power connector, so I have to carry that around with the enclosure.

Here's how stupid I am. Now I'm thinking that it might be more long-term effective to buy a DVD recorder. BestBuy has the HP one what supports both FireWire and USB2 and it's not a hell of a lot more. The CD-R speed is slower, but I don't really care all that much.

Anyone have any comments on the HP 300e? It writes DVD+R and DVD+R/W.

No idea about the HP 300e itself but DVD-R/RW is more compatible with things than DVD+R/RW. You might want to check that the DVD drives you've got can actually read DVD+R before buying it.

I got tired of hemming and hawing and realized that the local Apple retail store carries LaCie stuff. So I went over there and got one. Unfortunately, I got there to find that it was the FireWire-only version, which means no PC software. At the same time, if the PC software that usually comes with these things is as limited as the Toast Lite that came with the one I got, then no big loss. I'll just use cdrtools or buy Nero.

I downloaded the Nero demo and it seems to work fine. Toast Lite crashes when I try to make a data CD, and I can't seem to make a multisession CD at all, so I ended up using cdrtools, which work except for I have to reboot after in order for MacOS X to recognize the drives properly again.

Of course, now eMusic is effectively gone, so the whole reason I bought it in the first place is gone. Oh, well. I've needed one for a while now, really.