Hi all,

Firstly, a big thank you for pointing me (via excellent discussions) in the direction of the NEC 2510a - it's been spot on! Granted I'm not 100% familiar with all the "performance tests" that can be carried out.

Now on to the question... Is there any known issues for putting the 2510a in an external usb enclosure/case? - I'm just about to buy one, since I also mainly use a laptop.

cheers.

I have one in a combo USB 2.0 - Firewire case and it works fine with Firewire. USB 2.0 is hit or miss with different machines, so I would go for Firewire myself.

Any drive in an external enclosure may cause you issues.
Most people have no problems writing at 4X.
I have seen a few problems reported with external drives and 8X writing...

USB2 is more processor dependent and performance varies so much according to chipset, whether the usb2 host is onboard or pcmcia card etc.
I found out the expensive way that usb2 isn't really worth its salt (in my case at least). Go firewire. If u can get oxford 911 chipset, that's pretty much the best available. Firmware flashing works ok in either case.

Cheers all,

Just ordered the firewire/usb combo model....

warning xp sp2 rc2 beta has firewire driver bug in it the firewire encloser wont work with it at this time but USB2 does. An error report has been filed to MS bug site and they know about it, it has something to do with mass storage device over firewire wont initalize and freezes windows till you remove the encloser cable from firewire port.

I'm dreading XP SP2

Thanks for that information, I have 2 of my DVD-Burner on external enclosure as well. One with USB2.0/Firewire and one with only USB2.0. So far I don't have any problem with these 2 yet but will look forward to after I update XP to SP2

ya_jai

I find that firewire because it has less overhead and makes less usage of cpu time , is more stable for dvd burning. Thats why If I can I like to use ieee1394 over USB2.
I have since reformated HDD and gone back xp pro sp1 as the firewire works correctly with it.