Probably so; USB 2.0 is only so fast. The portable is a relic left over from when I used netbooks, which don't have an optical drive. The only time I use it now is when I'm ripping a CD that doesn't want to rip in in the internal drive, which is pretty rare. I suspect it works when the internal one doesn't because of its slower speed but I never bothered to try slowing down the internal one since the external one works for that.
Optical drives are very important to me, all my machines except one have at least 2 DVD burners and 2 have blu ray players and 2 have blu ray burners. The second DVD drive (the lower one in the tower) plays Region 2 DVD from the UK. I moved to the USA but have to play my Corrs and Madnesss video DVD's and several others. My wife loves the show Cybil. For unknown reasons it is not available here. I got the whole collection from Amazon UK and she can watch them on our home theatre computers on the lower drive with out the constant region lock issue. Also I rip my CD's and sometimes music videos from my DVD's. Yeah still love the physical thing not a collection of bits to stream if I have the correct password and my subscription is current.
Last edited by Indianatone; 19 Mar 2014 at 14:09. Reason: Spelling Mistakes
Yeah I couldn't live without an optical drive myself, especially since I rip or listen to music from my CD's all the time. Also create my own CD compilations all the way down to the CD art.
Correct all of my rigs have at least dvd read/writes and three have dual opticals with the other being Blu-ray's.
I have just the one optical drive in my desktop rig but I'm highly unlikely to ever need more than one at a time; I have the portable if that should ever happen. My other two 5.25" bays are occupied by a 3.5" HDD hot swap dock (I also have a 2.5" hot swap dock already built into the case; both are indispensable) and a card reader/USB 3.0 hub (my case doesn't have front panel USB 3.0 ports) that is indispensable. I wouldn't mind having another 3.5" HDD hot swap dock but I can always use an external dock in a pinch.
This is one of the main reasons I like my Cooler Master HAF X case, it has built-in hot swappable bays. All you do is mount a hard drive to one of the two front removable bays and slide back in. Bingo, hot swappable drive. Very convenient, and it keeps the drive hidden.
Drew, you know you can add 2 more hot swap bays if you wanted to.
HAF X SATA Back Plane- OEM Package - Cooler Master Store
HAF X Hot Swap Tray - OEM Package - Cooler Master Store
Thanks Steve but that back plate looks like a replacement in case the one you have goes bad. I'm not sure you could fit an extra back plate in the case to run 4 hot swap bays.
As for the trays, they're just extra trays to mount more hard drives. Meh... I don't really need more then the two I already have. If I need to replace a hard drive just remove two thumb screws and replace the other drive in the tray.
At any rate I just use one bay at a time unless I searching drives.
Though those are 5.25 inch bays I'm not sure they'll fit any other case.
Another One of my rigs
Amd Fx 6100
Kingston Hyper x 8Gb DDR3 1666mhz
XFX4850 1GB oc 1000Mhz :/
