Hi all,

I'm trying to get good burning rig mostly for high-quality audio. (Burning my own music). done bunch of web research and want Plextor, but also want ability to use with USB and Firewire. Thinking of getting Plextor 48x24x48 and putting in USB/Firewire enclosure.

Found the 48x Plex for $65 after rebate here: http://www.compuplus.com/insidepage....ber.com&id=728

Just wondering if there is a performance downside to rigging in ext. enclosure like this, as compared to using it as EIDE as it was designed for. Was considering Lite-on 52x on eBay for $117 already in ext enc. See it here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...403552649&rd=1

Thoughts on which is better way to go. Or should I not try to use an internal in external case? thanks

Straight answer: yes there is.
I mean.. it's up to you though. If someone bought me one, (*g*) I might use it to take my drive elsewhere, but.. when at home with my computer, I'd definitely keep my drive in the case.

To get a better idea of the differences that can be expected between external and internal drives, I suggest you compare the reviews of the 4824ta and 4824tu here at CD Freaks as a start. There's also a really good article at Tom's Hardware that tests the performance of one of the available ide enclosures on the market. Reading that would be even better.

As for getting the external lite-on.. if you've really got your heart set on something that's portable, then.. yeah. I think that would definitely be preferable to rigging up an external enclosure for an internal ide drive. So--it's up to you--what do you want??

You should check out them External Yamaha F1 they look like nice writers.

Keep in mind that the external and internal Plextor PX-W4824 models, are the *exact* same drive. There is however a little decrease in performance due to the interface and rumokeenme has already mentioned this. I agree with him..

I have the Plextor 48x24x48 USB2.0 drive. It is faster than my internal TDK 40x12x40 drives. I suppose if I were to install my plexy in my case, I would see a bit of a performance increase.

That would probably be the case Astronutty. With my external drive I can reach about 44x when reading and writing while my internal drive can reach 48x without problems.