5.25" DVD burner vs Slim burners

[DTN107]

I am thinking of building a SFF and will need to use up all the 5.25 bays.

I never burn that many DVDs on my laptop but I might have to go that route with my SFF and a slim dvd burner.

Do you guys think slim dvd burners are pretty good compare to the full size 5.25" burners? I am talking about burning at least 20 DVDs a week at minimum.

 

[engiNURD]

Are you a member of the Netflix backup repository team? 20 dvd's a week? wow. I'm not sure of their reliability, but they're so cheap these days, I'd just go for it. If it dies within a year, it should still be under warranty. If it dies after a year, switch to a 5.25" and put it in an external enclosure if you don't want it to change your box.

 

[DTN107]

I am also worry about the quality of the burns. Do the slim burners burn as well as the 5.25" burners?

I know USB externals hdds are slower than IDE hdds but will it be fast enough to provide data to the external dvd burner? I know this all sounds silly but if the external dvd burners or slim burners are not up to par with a full size 5.25" burner (preferable LG or Samsung) I wouldn't want to touch it.

Yes I am a quality whore .

 

[450]

For your purpose a 5.25 might be better. After about 100 DVD+R DL's my laptop drive needed to be replaced. Under warranty thankfully.

20/weekly is pretty heavy usage. What if you got something like this...
http://www.directron.com/5202auas.html
5.25" SATA to USB2/eSATA enclosure. If your SFF has an eSATA port on the mobo or room for an eSATA adapter then that enclosure + regular 5.25 SATA DVDRW seems like the best method. With eSATA you shouldn't have to worry about speed problems since AFAIK it is the same speed as SATA 2, much faster than FW400/USB2.

 

[DTN107]

Ah forgot all about e-SATA.

Thanks 450. e-SATA enclosure sounds like the perfect route for me.

 

[leward]

Usually the slim drives are slower than the full size drives, so I would definitely go with the eSATA drive.