First, I have popped in and out of AD for over a year. At first, it might as well have been written in Latin. Now, maybe just half of it. I just toasted my CPU due to a nasty little internet bug and am rebuilding and have been using my Laptop, Toshiba Satellite A60, 2.80 P4 with a Toshiba DVD-Rom SD-R2512( which only reads/writes cd's), and a Nero/shrink/anydvd guy from habit, but explore. My question is this. After toasting my desky, I have been dependent on my lappy w/no dvd capabilities and have learned how dependent I am on my burner. So, going with an internal for my lappy sounds like too much trouble, so, I thought why not go external dvd/cd burner that I can use in either my lappy or desky, although mainly for my lappy which I do not generally use to burn, desky have an internal. Although due to the virus, I have no other option, and the option of not burning is not an option. Is there anything special I need to look for in the unit, or is this not possible b/c I have not found any threads on the topic of using one unit between both. I am thinking I could get a better bang for my buck, thinking Lite-on, possibly LH20A1HX, but, want to support all formats, booktype/bitset, lightscribe - not a deal breaker - Or, just get an external and only use it for my lappy, which is likely how it will end up. Special thanx to Ripper for his basic guide. Sorry about rambling, I even edited this, still learning....
Hey Lambert58, Welcome to AD! I have the Lite-On LH-20A1HX and love it! It's actually a Lite-On LH-20A1H internal drive in a Lite-On enclosure. The Lite-On is the only external I found that had all the requirements that you list with one addition, I wanted fairly frequent firmware updates. The drive works great! Even better than the Lite-On LH-20A1H internal I have, if you can believe it! The only draw-back for me is that I also wanted a firewire connection, the Lite-On external has only USB 2.0, but with the USB connection you can also use it with any desktop with USB. You could also go a similar route and purchase separately an internal drive and an external enclosure. BTW, you can find these on some retailer sites as a "marriage". Meritline is one place. Generally though, the price will be greater than the Lite-On external and won't be designed by the same company for optimal operation. My only unfulfilled wish was to find the Lite-On set-up with one of their 18x burners instead of the 20x.
"My only unfulfilled wish was to find the Lite-On set-up with one of their 18x burners instead of the 20x" OOps, wanted to color that, maybe I didnt. Why? due to the limited availability of 20x medium. Here is the latin part of the question. And I have been twiddling with cd/dvd - Nero burns for over a year, which is not long but, Firewire, what the advantage over USB - Speed? I have not really found a poor review of the LH-20A1HX. As for the price, I was expecting it to be more, can find it in the low 60's. The knock seems to be the laser, which I am hoping is steadily improving. So, then it also works with AnyDvd/shrink/Nero, which is my go to progs. Roxio has a lot of bloat, not to offend, I started with Nero and it is so easy to pick up and go with. I have the latest , like 7.8.5 ultra enhanced, also have like, 6.5.5 or so which I read a lot about, less bloat, same engine. Although, 8 should be around the corner. Any tweaks needed to run this from my laptop, what about power heat issues. Actually going to pick up a cooler plate today for it. As for Nero, I just wish their cover designer was formatted better, the size of a cd front cover seems to be standard, so, why is it to large when Nero prints it out. Rambling again. Thanks for the response though, I am just a bit freaked after the virus took me out, wiped away my .svc through Win32, a nightmare, although salvaged my data. System just died after I restarted after moving final file to an external Maxtor 500, amazingly enough. Peace-
No main negatives but I've heard that the 18x Lite-On burners are even better/more accurate than the 20x burners. If you look at the CD Speed posts, the 18x burners generally have lower PIFs & PIEs and lower jitter scores. Regarding Firewire, my lappy has a firewire connection & what I've read, external burners connected via firewire have a faster throughput(upto 25%). As I understand firewire, firewire is more like a scsi connection while USB is more like a networking node. But mainly my wish for the firewire connection was to leave my usb ports available. Burning from the lappy generally means having your lappy on its ac connector, as I understand most burning software won't burn via a lappy unless it is connected to ac. I've used it with the latest Nero 7, DVDFab/ImgBurn, Decrypter/Shrink/Nero with no problems. Heat issues depends on your cpu and how you have your laptop set up. I have Toshiba Tecra A8 with a Core 2 Duo running XP Pro. Your main heat issue is going to be processing the files. My fan blows more and there is more heat generated but I've set my lappy to run pretty much at max when connected to ac. Even though this drive does Lightscribe, I've gone away from it and I never used Nero for the labels. I've found that the inkjet printed labels look better and disks are cheaper. I picked up an Epson for about $100 just to print the cds & dvds. I figure that I've recouped the cost of the printer on the price difference with the lightscribe disks plus I also print DLs.
Hobitt112 thanx for the reply. Man, I spent hours here today, and many more over the past 6 months and this was first post. I have decided on the Lite-On LH-20AIHD from newegg. This based almost entirely on info from AD. So, just wanted to say thanx, especially to those who did not flame my ramblings. If I could make one suggestion to AD, I'm treading lightly here, it would be to add the ability to print out the threads entirely. Maybe it is just me, but whenever I tried I was always cutting off the right margin. I wanted to print some of the guides, esp the "what to look for" to take to the real world store. Otherwise, I will continue on to keep lurking and learning. No doubt arguably the most consistent source of accurate info on topic I have found on the www ever. Keep it up, happy burnin'
If you mean the LH-20A1HX (never heard of a LH-20AIHD), you won't go wrong! I got mine from Newegg also and as I said earlier, I love it. It seems to be quieter than my internal also. When I print the threads, I prefer to highlight and select print selection, seems to work better. Some of the threads get mighty long so I understand AD not having a "print all" button for threads. Again, welcome to AD! Be sure and come back and share your burning experiences, questions and problems here, we're all learning from each other. Burn Bright and True sayeth the Hobbit!
Thanx again. Out of all the searching I have done the past week, nothing sticks out about a huge drawback on the LH-20A1HX , er not (HD) it was gettin late. Now trying to add on a trackball , looking at the no longer made MS trackball explorer, why, b/c the hunt is greater than the kill likely. Why search for something easy. But, I had one a few years ago and loved it. Tried the Kensington, a bit too big and just a little either clunky or twitchy, coulda been the coffee though. I heard the Logitech can be hit and miss, but wanna stich with the combo trackball / mouse. These wrists and fingers cant pluck like they used to. Trying to swing a deal with newegg, i'll see. Just glad your all out there, like I said probably lurked for close to a year and always left with something helpful. The virus pushed me to ask the dreaded "whats the best", question, but, just perusing the stacks, man I'm old, do they still have book stores? anyway, always good stuff to find, even learn from the flames of others, Any shouts as to a trackball I'll certainly check em out. Till then, Burn Baby Burn.......
YEAAAAA- The Lite-On LH-20A1HX arrived today and just plugged er in and this is my first stop before I even fire 'er up. Question as to firmware and drivers. It came with Nero 7 essentials blah blah blah, already have a newer version of Nero, although will be backing up to 6 when my desktop is ready. Anyway, on the Nero disc it also has "*Drivers and drive manuals" I remember reading about updating the firmware in other posts but did not find thin through search. The question is what are the thoughts regarding obtaining firmware updates from lite-On. I thought there were both pros and cons as to the relative effectivness of, and overall impact on performance. I'm waiting to hear before I fire 'er up. Which is killing me. free 3 day shipping from Newegg. shipped 7/27 and here today 62.00 I think, the packing slip dosent report the price.
OK, before I get slammed, I have been cruising through the forums again and found a bit more than I bargained for. I figured I better update this before I catch heck. But, please feel free to post any links that I may find helpful. I have questions about booktyping, overburn all with Nero. The more I read the less I know. Just when I thought I was getting better after year of ripped nights and burned days. Dang. So, please feel free to post links, suggestions, or, go ahead and flame me, I deserve it. Peace
I've found this place for the latest, enhanced firmware for my drve. Look for the LH-20A1H on the first post, that's where the latest firmware is posted (C0deKing edits the first post when he updates the firmware). While you're there, grab the "test Smartburn" program. This is a modified version which is on your cd disk (I didn't install anything from that disk) which allows you to set more things as default in your drive. Just set it and forget it, once set it's on (or off) until you update the firmware, which turns everything off. The modifications to the Smartburn program were done by one of the Lite-On engineers who frequents that site. That site also does some comparision of the latest firmware and there have be times when they recommend dropping back to an older version. p.s., my desky toasted it's power supply last night, pretty spectacular!
