Is An External Usb/firewire Dvd Drive

[sas_cars]

Hi there,

I recently bought a notebook without a CD/DVD drive.I m thinking to buy a firewire or USB dvdrw drive.What i don't know whether i would be able to boot my notebook from an external usb/firewire dvd drive?

[ZOVOX]

Hi there,

          I recently bought a notebook without a CD/DVD drive.I m thinking to buy a firewire or USB dvdrw drive.What i don't know whether i would be able to boot my notebook from an external usb/firewire dvd drive?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, there is usually a setting in your bios that allow you to boot from an external usb drive - not sure about firewire - but this setting is usually turned off.

[sas_cars]

Thanks.Are the USB/Firewire DVDRW drives which are being sold here can be powered by the USB/Firewire connection or do we need to plug extra power adapter for them to get power?

[monty]

USB cannot power a DVD R/W drive since it carries only 5Volts power.

Standard Firewire carries 12 Volts, however this is limited to 500 milliAmps. I guess every DVD R/W will need more juice!

In short, mostly you will only see 2.5" hard drives being powerd through either USB or Firewire. The 3.5" hard drives need 12 Volts as well, and need up to 1.5 Amps during the spin-up phase...

[sas_cars]

well thats a sad news if true.it means we cant use it on the fly

[moebius]

Hi there,

          I recently bought a notebook without a CD/DVD drive.I m thinking to buy a firewire or USB dvdrw drive.What i don't know whether i would be able to boot my notebook from an external usb/firewire dvd drive?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well I've seen backups on firewire drives boot as main OS on PC and Mac. Never bothered figuring out the details.

I have yet to see it done with USB, though I have read in different forums that it can be done. And I have read claims a basic PC OS can be booted from a USB pen drive.

On PC you specify your boot priority in the BIOS or you can hit f5 or f8 (can't remember!) to specify a boot drive.

On Mac (under OSX) you can hold down a key sequence at boot-up (OSX.2.8 is Option Key) which allows you to specify your boot drive. See Apple/support for your particular OS versions for the key command sequence.

BTW: if you connect and want to boot from a Firewire CD/DVD drive power Monty covered that issue quite well. It's all about power.

[Firefoxx]

In short, it all depends on your bios. Most new bios's have settings which allow this (along with allowing you to use a device attached to an add-on SCSI/IDE/SATA card as boot). What you do and how you do it depends on your particular bios.

Although it may be sad that you can't power everything with just your USB/firewire port, it's just a simple fact that these ports weren't designed to power anything that uses more than a basic supply. There are drives that will do this, but usually they're expensive and fairly limited. For firewire, you are also required to have the larger (6 connector) plug on your computer/notebook, and most notebooks only have the smaller (4 pin, found on DV cameras) port, which does not supply any power. Also, harddisks and CD/DVD drives of today are much faster and thus more power-hungry than before.

If you really want to write DVDs while on the road, get a notebook with a dvd writer built-in. They're not so expensive now, around 50-60k for Acers.

[monty]

Not sure if it might be usefull for some people, there are firewire add-on cards on the market (pci only, for desktops) which have a connector to hook it upto your power supply.

These cards can put the full power 12Volt bus of your power supply onto the firewire bus, thus enabling you to use pretty much anything you like powered from this bus!