USB DVD Drive

Do you want to watch movies on your computer, but you need a better DVD drive? Or, do you not even have a DVD drive? You need an external USB DVD drive.

You don’t need to be a computer mechanic, or send your computer in for alterations when you buy an external DVD drive. It’s as simple as buying the drive, plugging it into one of your USB ports, and you’re ready to roll.

Many people have used these external DVD drives to upgrade their existing, lower quality DVD drive inside the computer. It’s a great option, and will save you a ton of money if you’re considering buying a new computer just because you can’t currently watch movies.

Consider that you can purchase an external USB DVD drive for around $100, while a new computer would cost many times that! Below, in association with Amazon, we’ve highlighted some top picks for you on an external DVD drive purchase. Happy shopping! 

What else can external DVD drives do for me?

A DVD USB drive offers plug-and-play connectivity. Dual layer DVDs can be used for large presentation and movies, as they support a high speed writing of the DVDs. It can easily recognize the difference between a CD and DVD and read it correctly.

It is mostly USB powered drive but some may derive power externally from a power outlet. For faster speed, the drive uses USB 2.0. It can give a playback speed of 3600 KB per second with an access time of 120ms. The recording speed can be between 150KB per second to 3600 KB per second.

USB DVD drives make the writing of DVDs extremely fast without using up the space of your computer. For some models, the drive can externally derive the power therefore it doesn’t put pressure on the battery. The USB DVD drive is very portable and convenient for the play-stations and games where speed is one of the prerequisites. The ease of burning and writing a DVD is achieved by the DVD USB drive.

Additionally, if you are fed up with losing data, a USB DVD drive is an ultimate solution for your needs as it can act as a way to backup the contents of your hard drive. It’s affordably priced so you can easily acquire one from any computer store or find even better deals online.

What is USB?

USB, or universal serial bus, is the standard to line or interface external devices, such as a DVD drive, to a computer. It was designed to connect different peripherals using a single interface socket.

The use of USB devices improves the capacities by hot swapping, which means it allows the external devices to be attached and disconnected without switching off or rebooting the computer.   USB has replaced the legacy of parallel and serial ports. The computer peripherals like keyboards, mice, gamepads, scanners, printers, digital cameras can be connected through USB.

External  USB DVD Drive Buying Tips

There are many models of portable USB DVD drives in the market. So before you opt to purchase them, there are a few things that need to be considered in order to make the right choice.

• The first thing that you must know is the speed of the drive; USB 2.0 is the preferred version as it can write and play back at a very high speed. The speed may go up to 3600 KB per second for play back and recording. The higher the speed is, the faster the reading and writing would be.  

• DVD +/- RW is another feature that a good USB DVD drive must possess. The computer operating system should support the DVD drive that you are planning to purchase, or else it would be a mere waste.

The external DVD drive should also be light and compact as that will be ideal for laptops and tablet PCs. In most situations, it should be powered by the laptop’s USB ports so that no extra AC adapter is needed. (However, there are certain situations where you do want the DVD USB drive to have an AC adapter, so that the computer’s power & battery are not being drawn down by heavy DVD usage.)

• It is desirable that it has a USB pass through connector so that additional USB devices can be connected.

• The external DVD drive  should have software like Veritas RecordNow DX, Sonic Solutions My DVD, Veritas Simple backup, Power DVD, Jukebox and others for better performance. Most good USB DVD drives provide these software applications for free.