External DVD drive

[iviv]

Well, my Dell laptop's cd-rw/dvd-rom drive has decded to stop reading DVDs, and its rather old, so I doubt dell would do anything for me.
So, I'm now looking around for an external DVD drive.

But I'm trying to work out what would be more useful/reliable. Either a USB external drive, which will be around £30, or an internal one + a caddy. I'm assuming this would give almost identicle performance, but it would also mean I could plug the drive into my PC when I finally ditch my laptop (not going to be for a while).

The external option will certainly be much easier to do, less fiddley. How useful is it to have 2 DVD-rw drives in a PC though? Many people seem to have them, but I don't really think I'd really use it, since most of the time I copy my game-cds onto my hard drive or use no-cds, so I don't have to fiddle around trying to find where I left the CDs.

Also, whats the transfer speed like? Would watching a DVD from one play ok, or would it be laggy/jerkey?

Thanks

Edit: whoops, can a mod shift this to the right forum? >_>

 

[jak731]

the usb external dvd drive will most likely be a internal dvd drive and caddy that has been assembled and with a bit of work you should be able to take the drive out anyway. as for havign a 2nd dvd drive, they are useful as it allows you to have a backup drive incase one drive is causign problems or if one drive doesnt like a disc, you can try with the other, but a second drive is not really needed however it is nice to have.