Sony DRX-530UL DVD±RW Burner

Pros: Fast, Reliable, USB2 and USB1.1, Firewire, Quiet, Small
Cons: A little heavy

I had never actually thought about buying an External DVD writer. Then one day, my prized possession, my Toshiba Laptop, refused to read my CD’s and DVD’s. What followed was mass panic. It was no longer ...

Pros: Relatively inexpensive, fairly high speed, relatively small power supply
Cons: Very poor reliability, large/bulky/heavy, slow vendor service.

After purchasing this product over a year ago, I have had several bad experience with this portable DVD drive (and the drive was NOT subjected to mishandling, it is normally stored and used in a table-top environment). My original drive failed after a couple of months, and was replaced via mail-in warranty service. The replacement unit fails to correctly write DVDs (plus or minus format, 8x or 16x, multiple different brands) about 1 out of every 4 disks.