Rewritable DVD to Go: The External Option
Photograph: Marc Simon
External drives connect to your PC via either a USB 2.0 or a FireWire connection. As a result, modern external drives are as fast as their internal cousins: The Plextor PX-504UF (our external-drive Editor's Pick) achieved the same speed in our tests as the internal version, the Plextor PX-504A. External drives are more expensive, though--the PX-504UF costs $80 more. The PX-504UF comes with both USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces, while other external drives (such as the HP DVD Movie Writer Dc3000) have only a USB 2.0 interface.
Removable Media
The advantage of an external drive is that it can easily be shared between several systems. You can plug in and remove drives using a USB 2.0 or FireWire connection without having to reboot the system. This is also an advantage for security in that you can safely lock the drive away until it is needed. USB 2.0 drives can be connected to a slower USB 1.1 port, but in that setup the burning process is very slow. Fortunately, most modern PCs come with several USB 2.0 ports. If your system has both types of USB port, or if you have added a USB 2.0 upgrade card, make sure you plug your drive into a USB 2.0 port.
DVD and Video in One
The HP DVD Movie Writer Dc3000 combines a DVD+RW drive and an analog video capture card. Paired with the bundled video transfer software, it can capture video and write it to DVD, but at $400 the unit is more expensive than a single-function external drive. Though the drive burns to rewritable DVD+RW discs, HP bundles no packet-writing software with it; if you want to be able to drag and drop files from Windows Explorer onto DVD+RW discs, you'll need to buy a DVD mastering suite that includes a packet-writing program, such as Nero Burning ROM ($99) or Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator ($99).
Richard Baguley
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