03-25-2009, 02:53 PM

I have a lot (close to 100) recorded DVD discs (all from personal videotape from camcorder) and I need to duplicate them so each member of my family can have one. I have a MacBook Pro with Leopard. I can use the internal DVD player but need also an external DVD writer. Can you recommend one? If you know of some other process that might work just as well, I would be interested to learn about it. At this point, I'm thinking I just purchase an External DVD writer for $100 or less and then connect it via the USB port/Firewire port and start duplicating them. Any thoughts?

03-25-2009, 03:38 PM

In a word - Pioneer. The 116D (ATA) or 216D (SATA) will suit your purposes admirably (D = dual layer).

Looking at your budget, I'd suggest using a 'bare' drive with an ATA-USB2 or SATA-USB2 adaptor kit. If you want consistent speed of transfer however, then a firewire drive enclosure (rec: Oxford chipset) will be required. Shop around, but a widely promoted supplier is Find the latest Performance Upgrades, Firewire and USB Hard Drives, SATA, Memory, Laptop Battery, and more at OWC.

Transferring material is best done with simple 'duplicate' I suggest. You don't mention any disk burning software, but you can do the job using OS X own facility.