PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

While doing my next upgrade i am thinking of putting my CD burner and DVD drive in an external enclosure and connecting them with USB2 or firewire. it is because i can put the drives in a more convenient place, and also share them between the 2 machines by hot plugging the USB2/firewire (or using some kind of swithc box) between the 2 computers.

just a couple of questions about that.

i know USB drives can simply appear as "external drive" when plugged in but is that ok if i want to use an akai CD with my STS (although i rarely do sometimes i need to)

and if i have a game that requires a CD will it notice that the external drive has it.

and regarding USB hubs, does the slowest thing connected to a hub (mouse or something) cause all the other ports on the hub to be as slow as it (not good for burning CDS) and does the "hub" in the computer that gives you 6 ports or whatever also act like this.

thanks for letting me waste your time

btw the upgrade is:
main pc:
p4b266 p4 1.6 @ 2.4 1GB DDR 333
to
p4p800 deluxe p4 2.4c @ ???
1g DDR dual channle DDR 400

pulsar/scope PC
celeron 1.2 tualatin @ 1.5 512megs pc133(actually works quite well)
to
the old board, cpu and ram from above

tualatin will now be made into a HTPC with passive cooling (which it actually has now as well!)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Neutron on 2003-10-04 22:42 ]</font>

afaik,yes to all those questions.i would expect cd burning to be slower along usb or firewire than ide though.

thanks, i dont care if its a bit slower, i have read reviews where the external burners were quite fast (no noticable slowdown for a 40x on usb2)

im curently using a 16x10x40, and have bought a 52x32x52 for the external box, so im sure it will still be better than what im used to