Hey, I just ordered a 5.25" external enclosure for my BenQ 1650 so that I could use it on my laptop, but my laptop also uses an external hard drive to store the files that I want burned. I haven't got the 5.25" enclosure yet, but I want to know if there are any problems with burning from external HDD to external DVDRW? Also, is it possible to burn at 16x with this external to external setup? I could copy the file{s] I want burned to the internal drive, but it would be pretty tedious after doing it dozens of times. By the way, they will both be using USB 2.0.
No this doesn't cause any problems. You will not be able to burn at 16X nor should you want to for a quality burn. About the best speed that can be obtained consistently is 8X. I have seen occasions where 16X speeds have been obtained but they are few and far between and occur only under the best of circumstances. There's only a couple minutes difference between 16X and 8X burns. A lot depends on the communication chipsets in both the computer and the enclosure. Some work better together than others. The amount of disk fragmentation plays a role as does the quality of the media used.
