Mac Forum / General / Hardware / March 2008

After looking at a bunch of lightscribe drives and the software that
drives them (mostly, it's XP-based), I can't make any recommendations.  
They all suck or the light scribe feature just plain doesn't work right
on a Mac.

You're better off buying an external Firewire or USB2 DVD DL burner
without the Lightscribe feature and using CD Stomper labels (yes, I know
they're not recommended--so use a Sharpie instead).

Firewire will be the absolute best to use, both in speed and reliability.

A Firewire CD/DVD drive will always be bootable on any modern Mac.
Though the new Intel based Macs also can boot from USB 2.0, Firewire 400
or Firewire 800 will be faster and quite a lot more stable.

Here I'll clearly recommend a LaCie drive. They are reliable and very
robust. - fx. one of these two

Desktop models
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11001 $169.99USd
Includes Roxio Toast Titanium 8 software
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11005 $139,99USd
same drive without Toast titanium 8 software

Or if you want a mobile unit....
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10985 $109,99USd
Firewire, Including Roxio Toast Titanium 8 software

I have such one myself, but mine is a generation older without
LightScribe. It is BUS powered from the Firewire connector, and it works
great.

cheers, Erik Richard

While the USB2 has a very slightly higher maximum burst speed, Firewire
has better sustained throughput and is recommended for hard drives and
burners. A Google search for "USB vs Firewire Mac" will give you plenty
of documentation.

It does on my Macs with my external drives, but it could be dependent
upon the particular drives and connection -- I have LaCie "Porsche"
external burners.

See above.

You're welcome.

Welcome to the Mac community! We're glad to have you.  : )

USB in inferior to Firewire in many ways, all of which are due to the
fact that USB was originally designed for simplicity and low cost.
Firewire, on the other hand, was designed with high performance in mind,
from the ground up.

USB uses a master-slave paradigm that requires the host computer handle
all scheduling and data flow (resulting in CPU utilization), and where
devices cannot talk directly to each other as a result. Firewire uses a
peer-to-peer architecture where devices can talk directly to each other
without depending on the host computer (resulting in extremely low (or
no) CPU utilization).

One major draw-back for USB is that the slowest device on a USB bus
causes all other devices to communicate at that same slow speed.
Firewire doesn't have this limitation.

Speed isn't the only factor - efficiency and robustness matter. But in
terms of speed, Firewire is faster in real-world use.

Absolutely.

I've had good experiences with the LaCie d2 DVD±RW with LightScribe
drive.

<http://www.lacie.com/us/products/range.htm?id=10014>

Overall, in terms of performance and features, it's been a great drive
and has been a pleasure to own and use.

I did have one problem: I originally bought this drive in June 2006.
Just last month (Feb 2008), the drive stopped recognizing all media
(blank or not) I inserted into the drive. The drive would just sit there
and the media wouldn't ever mount. I contacted LaCie support and it
turns out the drive was dead. Unfortunately, while the drives now come
with a two-year warranty, when I purchased this one in 2006, it came
with a *one-year* warranty. LaCie was nice enough to offer me a
significant discount on a replacement drive, though. They sold me the
one that comes with Toast 8 Titanium (normally $169) for just $99. I
would have preferred if the original drive had not died, of course. Then
again, the new one works well, is faster, and comes with a two-year
warranty. So Im still fairly happy.

Thanks for the many responses...appreciate it. Looks like the Lacie unit
is the one to get!