How come no sff's use laptop-sized optical drives?

[Dman877]

In any sff, the optical drive takes up like half the case but they make laptop optical drives that are the size of 2 cd cases. I'd think this could save a ton of room and allow for more expansion and better cooling. Is there some sort of compatability issue with notebook optical drives I don't know about? I know some external ones can use usb 2.0 so I figure it should work...

 

[Kaido]

Some cases built for the mini-ITX platform do use the laptop-sized optical drives, as well as the 2.5" laptop hard drives. Check out the Mini-ITX website and visit the store section. Some cases, such as the Morex Cubid 2699V case can handle a regular 3.5" hard drive and a slimline laptop optical drive, while other cases such as the Morex Cubid 3677 and 3688 use both the slimline hard drives and optical drives.

Of course, these are based on the old Cyrix chips, now owned by Via (and now called EPIA and C3 chips). Not very powerful - they only go up to 1.2ghz right now - but they're small, don't need a lot of power, and run cool and quiet.

 

[Dman877]

Thanks for the info. Those look reall customized though, I've never heard of those motherboard formats they support. Good to see those brits on top of things anyway .

 

[MDE]

Laptop drives are also slow, but I guess someone could put up with that.

 

[MatthewF01]

some stupid dell desktop at work (i work in a call center) has a stupid laptop drive.

 

[fragstar]

Laptop drives are more expensive too. I have seen one machine where someone fitted two laptop optical drive into a shuttle. Though I don't thnk it is necessary.

 

[eelw]

Price and compatibility. You already pay a slight premium by buying a SFF. So why pay more for a proprietary CD/DVD drive when you can use any normal 5.25 desktop optical drive.

 

[redgtxdi]

What I'm typing on right now is a Dell 4600C (P4 2.4/80GB/DVD+R/RW). I suppose it's a bit unusual because it uses a regular desktop 3.5 HD, ***BuT***.....uses a laptop 2X DVD burner!! It works well 'cuz it makes it thin which is what I needed for my desktop to fit my LCD, printer and computer. So for me it works rather perfectly.

It works rather well, though I only have it because I got a deal on it. I have done some burning on it but I prefer to do burning on my e-cube which has a regular 5.25" 4X burner in it. Just a little faster. What I like most about the 4600C is that it's dead-quiet!! Compared to my old tower, it's nice to hear nothing!!

 

[MDE]

Regular 5.25" desktop hard drive? Haven't seen one of those in at least 5 years, probably closer to 10.

 

[redgtxdi]

he hee heee!! Post edited! Had 'enclosure' sizes on the brain!!! Saalllright now........got me enclosure!! All's well with the world!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[preslove]

As someone already stated, the dell mini desktop thingies have laptop drives. Those machines are actually pretty nice.

 

[Hallis]

I personally would only pay the premium for the devices that use the lappy hardware if space and noise were FAR more important than preformance. which. to me they arent.

 

[piasabird]

Laptop drives tend to use less power also. Asus makes a real thin portable CDRW/DVD Burner. The laptop versions need special mounting hardware and may have the Laptop IDE ports that have more pins and require an adapter also. Some Laptop IDE ports have the power and data on the same cable.

 

[Mingon]

I have just got hold of 2 EZGO Micro pc's to help with my F@h output. These use laptop cd and hard drives and are pretty cool