I have an old Toshiba notebook, from 2002, I think, which is nothing but parts now. I wonder if the DVD drive would fit in this? Might make a good cheap external for a netbook, if not for writing, at least for installing programs and maybe playing DVD.
hindjew said: which one of these would this work with? Why buy a burner to fit an enclosure just because the enclosure is priced low. Just buy this drive from Newegg.
jimates said: hindjew said: which one of these would this work with? Why buy a burner to fit an enclosure just because the enclosure is priced low. Just buy this drive from Newegg.
what are the drives competible with this, I have an IBM T42 DVD drive and a Lenovo T61 DVD drive, will these two work on this enclosure?
hindjew
Member
posted: Oct. 25, 2009 @ 11:44p
GMY said: jimates said: hindjew said: which one of these would this work with? Why buy a burner to fit an enclosure just because the enclosure is priced low. Just buy this drive from Newegg.
rayfor said: what are the drives competible with this, I have an IBM T42 DVD drive and a Lenovo T61 DVD drive, will these two work on this enclosure?
Just about any windows based IDE optical drive should work with this, the exceptions would be Apple optical drives and most Toshiba Windows laptop drives (I'm talking about Toshiba branded LAPTOPS, not Toshiba manufactured drives for other brands of laptops) because Apple/Toshiba drives have funky firmware (Toshiba has firmware setting it to inverted Master, SEE THIS DRIVE FOR DISCLAIMER or sometimes Cable Select, Apple used similar firmware for their optical drives). The other requirement would be that your drive is a standard Slimline 12.5MM high, and NOT a SUPER (or ULTRA) Slimline that is only 9.5MM high (SEE THIS DRIVE AS AN EXAMPLE). Super Slimline were used in certain compact laptops (the Dell X300 series leaps to mind) and the Intel based Apple laptops (MacBooks and MacBook Pros when they still had IDE opticals, the current versions use SATA drives now).
Centrix is a safe and great company to deal with, they buy older items in bulk so they will often have slightly dated NOS (new old stock) items that can be difficult to source from other places. They also have lots of used system pulls. However they are not necessarily the most economical choice for parts, they do charge shipping on pretty much everything. I've been a loyal customer of theirs for years because they usually have a decent stock of new unused OEM optical drives for Macs, with prices on new items that favorably compare to what used items would cost on eBay. But with the advent of the Intel based Macs, Ive used them far less frequently since the need for odd firmware standard sized optical drives has dropped off along with the marketability of PPC based Macs. For some reason Centrix hasn't stocked the 9.5MM high drives the Intel Mac laptops need, and when they do have them they are not competitively priced.
What I'm trying to say is, buy this enclosure ONLY if you already have a drive laying around to put into it, don't buy a new drive specifically to put in this enclosure. External optical drives can be gotten from Newegg for around $55 shipped (often less on sale), and you'll have decent warranty coverage with them. I can highly recommend THIS DRIVE, which (with promo code) is currently under $47 shipped. It is a Teac drive unit in a Rosewill case, it's a quality drive that works with everything (I've used it with OSX 10.4-10.6, Windows XP, Vista, and 7) and it has a fairly standardized USB Y cable (the drive in the OP uses a separate power cable and may be underpowered through the USB connector). The key with external USB drives is will they work when the laptop is running on battery power: the Rosewill drive at Newegg draws power through two USB ports on the laptop into the USB data connection on the case. The external drive case in this thread would draw power from one USB port on the laptop into the USB connection on the enclosure, and one USB port on the laptop into the power connector on the enclosure (separate cable, not included, SEE THIS DRIVE AT NEWEGG FOR AN EXAMPLE, CHECK THE CABLE DETAIL PIC HERE TO SEE WHAT I MEAN).
Trust me, if you need an external DVD burner, just buy the Rosewill unit for $47 shipped and you'll be a happy camper. If you have lots of drives already laying around, grab the enclosure in the OP. Remember to add $6.23 for shipping, so the bare empty enclosure will actually cost you $15.22.
If you are not sure whether it fits your drive, send the seller an email, and you will get answer in a day or two.
I bought one last week, have yet received it since shipped from Hong Kong
supercoups
Member
posted: Oct. 26, 2009 @ 8:52a
Kid Charliemain, Thanks for the info. I actually bought this enclosure to use with an optical drive that came from a Toshiba Satellite that I have laying around. Any idea how to tell if my DVD drive has the inverted master firmware? Thanks!
Thanks OP. I hadn't checked out Centrix in a while and found an IDE/SATA External USB 2.0 aluminum enclosure for 2.5 in. notebook HDDs for $9.49 ($8.50 for 2+). It has mini-USB2 and SATA external connections and a +5V input jack (includes USB to +5VDC cable). You can put either a 40 pin IDE PATA laptop drive or a SATA drive in the enclosure. I do a lot of laptop backup imaging and cloning so this will come in really handy, and it is cheaper than others I've seen. I'm interested to know if anybody knows of any place that has something like this enclosure cheaper than this. And I don't need the cloning software that normally comes with it (normally a trimmed down version of Acronis True Image).
I also noticed that their entire stock of PV batteries are on clearance at 41% off. Not sure if this something they do everyday. 12V batteries range from 34 Ah to 305 Ah and there are 2V and 6V batteries too.
thomasshi said: you guys might be interested in this Link
If you are not sure whether it fits your drive, send the seller an email, and you will get answer in a day or two.Do you have a non-feebay contact for him?
winton said: thomasshi said: you guys might be interested in this Link
If you are not sure whether it fits your drive, send the seller an email, and you will get answer in a day or two.Do you have a non-feebay contact for him? Bottom of ad says hilaptop@msn.com
There are many on Fleabay which I looked and was surprised when I saw this post. Most of these are aroun < 10 dollars shipped. I did research most of them take most of the drives.
supercoups
Member
posted: Oct. 26, 2009 @ 1:33p
Wish I had known about the Fleabay deals before I ordered this one. I did some searching but must have entered the wrong keywords since all the ones I found were around $20 with shipping. Thanks for the info!
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