[G4] Twofer-Half On And Half Off

[Robert MacLeay]

> On 5/12/06 8:35 AM,Fred Thiel <fthiel at sbcglobal.net> asked
> 
> Second, the off: I am looking for an inexpensive but reliable external
> enclosure for my old Quicksilver internal CD-RW. I bought a DVD for it and
> would like to use the old one as an external. Don't need USB 2, just USB 1 and
> maybe, but not necessarily firewire. It is going to be used primarily on my
> Grape iMac 333.
> 

Hello, Fred!

USB-1 is a bad idea for CD burning, and, on PPC Macs, USB-2 is not much
better.  

The problem is that USB-1 just does not have the bandwidth necessary.  You
cannot count on being able to burn faster than 2x.  Theoretical maximum
would only be 4x, and bear in mind that depending on your USB setup, you may
be sharing the channel you are burning on with other peripherals.

USB-2 _might_ give you a true 4x.

Also, you cannot boot off a USB drive, while you can off a FireWire drive.

If you cannot find a second hand FireWire box, I would forget it.

Price no object? Upgrade to external SATA.  This would be overkill for a 12x
CD drive, but (you gotta buy an SATA hard disk too) really speed up your
overall computing.

-- 
Robert MacLeay