#1 2026-10-12 11:27:04

Martin

Member

From: Stockholm, Sweden

Registered: 2015-10-01

Posts: 854

Website

CD/DWD RW units in these days

My old SATA CD/DVD RW unit acts up. I don't use it much but I do still have non-zero use for it. Looking around I find the only option new is external USB units. Anyone know how well they work with Linux?

I can find SATA units on the 2nd hand market. They are either conspicuously cheap or same price as cheaper new USB units.

/Martin

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PackRat

jgmenu user Numero Uno

Registered: 2015-10-02

Posts: 3,087

Re: CD/DWD RW units in these days

The one I have works[ed] fine for burning data or making an audio CD/DVD. Watching a video was painfully janky, and many do not support BlueRay or newer formats.
What's your use case scenario?

I haven't used it for years.

Edit - still works. Burning data to the USB optical drive. Reading the data CD on the internal optical drive.

Even have a use for the CD afterwards:

Must be at least 5 years since using an optical drive. Had to burn some financial data to a CD several years back.

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Sector11

Mod Squid Tpyo Knig

From: Upstairs

Registered: 2015-08-20

Posts: 8,454

Re: CD/DWD RW units in these days

I had two.  Both died.  I have zero use for them.
I have two USB External drives,  I use them for backup only.
They are slow.

Never tried installing a system on them but I would imagine they would be slow.

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WizardofCOR

Member

From: Somewhere in the Desert

Registered: 2023-07-28

Posts: 106

Re: CD/DWD RW units in these days

Have several in multiple machines - I still use them for a variety of purposes.  Even have a blu-ray burner as well.
But I'm old-school - even have floppy drives and media.  To me, all interfaces present opportunity - and having options can really help.

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greenjeans

Member

Registered: 2025-01-18

Posts: 391

Website

Re: CD/DWD RW units in these days

I still have some in several machines, don't get used often but there are a couple of cases for them:

1. I make backups of my work from time to time on DVD's just to have an extra hard-copy that I don't have to worry about anything electronically going bad.

2. A large focus of my work is resurrecting older hardware for folks in my community, and some older machines typically from the early 2010's will boot from the optical drive, but not from USB.

So I have a pretty good stash of DVD's and CD's. Last time I was at wal-mart they still had just a few of both for sale.

Last edited by greenjeans (Today 16:51:10)