I'm looking for a portable (external) CD-RW drive to work with my laptop, preferably over 12x write speed. The benefit to having the portable CD-RW drive though is not as much if it can't be bus powered in some way....
I ruled out the LaCie PocketCD-RW because it is only 8x write
I have also been looking at the Addonics Pocket CDRW, which is available in speeds up to 16x (10x rewrite) which is definitely more what I'm looking for.
However my laptop only has USB 1.x and no firewire port. I was considering their USB 2.0 or Firewire cardbus controller cards, however I emailed their tech support dept and they told me that their cardbus controller cards don't supply bus power, I would have to have a built in Firewire or USB 2.0 port in my PC, so I guess I'm SOL there. Although one thing I don't understand is why their USB 2.0 cardbus card comes with its own AC adapter... I have seen this with Belkin USB 2.0 cardbus cards as well.... It doesn't really help me much if I have to plug in the card itself to get bus power to the CDRW (something they haven't clarified for me yet) and it would really suck if I had to have the card AND the CDRW plugged in! Anyone using one of these USB 2.0 controller cards have any comments? I would imagine that the cards power adapter is not needed if your devices have their own power supplies, but if it does supply a certain amount of bus power it would be usefull if you had multiple devices that didnt draw too much power, they could all get bus power from one ac adapter...
So anyway, they told me that if I used the drive with my built in USB 1.x port on my laptop I could get bus power, but I would be limited to 4x speed. I would be able to use the USB 2.0 card when near a power outlet to get higher burning speed then, and hopefully my next laptop would have USB 2.0 built in.
The question here is, does anyone know any other USB 2.0 drives that support power from the host controller besides the Addonics?
I ruled out the LaCie PocketCD-RW because it is only 8x write
I have also been looking at the Addonics Pocket CDRW, which is available in speeds up to 16x (10x rewrite) which is definitely more what I'm looking for.
However my laptop only has USB 1.x and no firewire port. I was considering their USB 2.0 or Firewire cardbus controller cards, however I emailed their tech support dept and they told me that their cardbus controller cards don't supply bus power, I would have to have a built in Firewire or USB 2.0 port in my PC, so I guess I'm SOL there. Although one thing I don't understand is why their USB 2.0 cardbus card comes with its own AC adapter... I have seen this with Belkin USB 2.0 cardbus cards as well.... It doesn't really help me much if I have to plug in the card itself to get bus power to the CDRW (something they haven't clarified for me yet) and it would really suck if I had to have the card AND the CDRW plugged in! Anyone using one of these USB 2.0 controller cards have any comments? I would imagine that the cards power adapter is not needed if your devices have their own power supplies, but if it does supply a certain amount of bus power it would be usefull if you had multiple devices that didnt draw too much power, they could all get bus power from one ac adapter...
So anyway, they told me that if I used the drive with my built in USB 1.x port on my laptop I could get bus power, but I would be limited to 4x speed. I would be able to use the USB 2.0 card when near a power outlet to get higher burning speed then, and hopefully my next laptop would have USB 2.0 built in.
The question here is, does anyone know any other USB 2.0 drives that support power from the host controller besides the Addonics?
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