Buying a CD or DVD drive these days is pretty easy - you may never even enter a brick-and-mortar store to buy it. If you're on the Web, you can choose from hundreds of online stores. You can shop 24 hours a day, at your leisure, and you have all the time you need to compare features and prices. It's paradise for those people who are ready to purchase online.
Your first choice to make in your trip down Hardware Boulevard is a simple one, yet it has the most effect on the price and performance of a recorder. If you've never run across these terms, an internal drive lives inside your computer (just like your floppy drive or your existing CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives - the latter two are read-only drives). An external drive sits outside your computer, using a power cord of its own and a cable of some sort to connect to your computer's case (like the Hewlett-Packard external recorder that's shown in Figure 1).
Figure 1: An external drive is ready to go solo.
Stay inside with internal
Why pick an internal drive? Most folks do - and for the following reasons:
- Convenience: Your drive is built in to your computer, without an extra power cord to mess with and some sort of connection cable to boot.
- Speed: Depending on the interface, most internal drives are faster than their external brethren.
- Cost: An internal drive is usually less expensive than an external unit, because it's not carrying around its home like a digital hermit crab.
Breathe the open air with external
For some computers (for example, laptops and the stylish Apple iMac), you have to choose an external drive because you have literally no room to install a second internal drive. However, the following are good reasons why an external recorder would appeal to even the stodgiest PC owner:
- It saves a bay. A bay is an internal space inside your PC's case where you can add devices. Most desktop PCs have several of them, but techies and power users can easily fill every bay with other gadgets. Because the case has no room inside, an external drive suddenly looks sexy and attractive (at least to them).
- It's easy to install. Adding an external drive means that you can leave your desktop alone, and it may even be easier than installing an internal drive. If you choose a USB or FireWire drive, for example, the process is as simple as plugging in a connector and the power cord.
- It's portable. Everyone in the building can share your recorder, perhaps as a backup device or to carry along with laptops. (By the way, you can also lock up an external drive to keep it from being carried away, if you get my drift.)
Here's the bottom line: Unless your computer simply doesn't have room or you don't want to open it, save money and stick with an internal recorder.
