External CD drive for MacBook Pro for Ripping

Hello, please could you recommend a top external CD drive for my MBP ?

I need it only for CD ripping with XLD.

Thanks.....

 

I use the Apple one, which was conveniently stolen from work. I don't think it's any better or worse then any other option, we're not in the age of Plextor anymore where there's such a thing as a high end cd rom drive.

 

Alternative to the Apple one?

 

This one's pretty solid.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Elect...0864578&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+optical+drive

 

Thanks.

 

That's the one I got for my Mac for the express purpose of cd/dvd ripping. It works flawlessly. I'm going to pick up another one for back-up. Rips great with XLD. You will be pleased...

 

The dBPowerAmp people have a list of rated DVD-ROM drives and how they perform in terms of error handling:

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?34019-CD-DVD-Drive-Accuracy-List-2014

In truth, almost anything can work as long as you get a bit-accurate result in the end. I disagree with the chart about the Matsushita UJ-series 9mm laptop drives, which to me are total pieces of junk. I think they wound up in the survey because many, many people foolishly use the drives in their laptops. I believe a full-size external drive from a name-brand manufacturer is going to perform faster, better, and will hold up better over a period of time. In truth, they all fall apart a lot faster now than they used to. Gone are the days where you could get years and years and years of use out of a DVD-ROM drive. But... on the plus side, you can get a couple of years out of a $20 drive today.

 

Thanks, I have now found 2 drives:

http://geizhals.at/samsung-se-218gn-se-218cn-rsbs-a1192595.html

http://geizhals.at/plextor-px-650us-weiss-a731193.html

Which one should I get?

 

You know what you need it for? Specs are good or similar? Best build and best guarantee thereafter for me. If they're clocking in at under £50 you're not losing much coin but you do want reliability.

 

Now I have bought the Samsung, but I dont know the right offset correction because XLD cant found it. What to do now - please help?

 

Now I have bought the Samsung, but I dont know the right offset correction because XLD cant found it. What to do now - please help? Also can not find it in the database....

 

Now I have bought the Samsung, but I dont know the right offset correction because XLD cant found it. What to do now - please help? Also can not find it in the database....

 

Try using a different CD to configure AccurateRip.

 

And please how to configure AccurateRip ?

 

Take the drive back and get a mac superdrive. I use one with my macbook Pro. I also use Roxio 12 pro software. It's basically plug and play/record with my macbook pro.

 

The drive is ok, I only want to know how i can configure AccurateRip with XLD ?

Edit: +6 have figured it out with old Windows PC :-(

 

I have the same problem with a Buffalo drive and Accurate Rip. I have tried ten to fifteen CDs now, and two were accepted to configure the drive. I need one more!

Those slim drives are incredibly slow! I have one full size LG drive which is super fast, even in secure mode. So sad that they don't sell them anymore. Has anyone tried a full size bluray drive for ripping? Are they faster? Or has anyone tried an internal drive in one of these cases to make them external usb drives? Are they any good?

 

I have an LG branded USB Blu-Ray Rewriteable drive. It handles pretty much any disc you can throw at it. And it's capable of burning M-Disc DVDs, highly reccomended. That said, in secure mode, it's really no faster than a laptop drive - no idea if this has anything to do with being connected via USB though, might be faster if it was in a standard drive bay and hooked up directly to the MoBo.

In burst mode, on the other hand, not uncommon for it to hit read speeds approaching 40x.


The only thing it seems to have trouble with is ripping hidden audio in the pre-gaps securely.

It doesn't really matter what drive you use but this one is built well, gives me no trouble, and reads through some pretty battered discs with ease. I'm not sure how much better a drive can get at that.

 

It is pretty amazing how long it takes to rip a CD these days. I guess a lot of it is XLD and accuraterip. I don't think USB is the bottleneck sadly, but I'm curious if there's anything actually faster then the Apple superdrive I'm using.

 

A lot depends on your drive. I have a collection of Plextors plus the Matsushita junk in my Mac. The PX 230 (which is just a CD drive) rips much faster than either of my PX 712 or PX 716 (both CD/DVD drives). These, though, are still quicker than the Matsushita which is quite slow.

Also check your settings - if you are testing every disc regardless of whether it is in the AccurateRip database that will double your ripping time as the drive reads each disc twice. If you are prepared to only test those discs not in the AccurateRip database then that speeds ripping up considerably.

 

All of that is great info, thanks. I kind of wish there were (and there may be) settings in XLD that amounted to "assume the disc is going to be fine unless a big problem is found". I'm glad I switched to it vs. ripping in itunes, but I think there's a lot of solutions to problems that most discs don't have there.

 

To go back to the Plextor PX230, I have ripped other 1,000 discs since the start of the year. Having XLD only test those discs not in the AccurateRip database I am consistently ripping 10 discs an hour even when you are talking about 70+ minute discs.

 

I wonder if I can get a SCSI-USB adaptor and hook up my Plextor 40/12/405 to my Mac Mini.

 

I just checked my XLD settings and it looks like I already don't have the boxes checked for test before copy. I guess the Apple Superdrive is just rather slow. The good news is while somehow its not in that dppoweramp database despite surely being pretty common, other Optiarc made drives of similar models seem pretty accurate.

 

I think you'd probably lose any performance benefits of a speedy Plextor. As best as I can tell SCSI-USB adaptors are more for data recovery, but I could be wrong.

I myself was considering a USB 3.0 5.25" optical drive external enclosure I saw on Amazon for $40, and pairing it with a reasonably good IDE drive. A contemporary Plextor DVDRW drive is $30, but like I said early in the thread, at that price I'm not sure how much Plextor magic is left.