CD drive needed for ripping.

[Paul7777x]

I’ve managed to mangle an HDD with about a hundred or so of my ripped cds now inaccessible. So I’ll need to re-do them.

Alas I don’t have a cd drive, my last Mac with one was flung some time ago.

Is there anything I should be aware of buying an external drive? I just need the cheapest one that will do the job.

Cheers

 

[RandomEar]

If you want to get the drive with the least read errors and the least problems with (potentially damaged) discs, look at this list and select a top contender. However, those are nearly all internal drives, so you will also need an additional USB enclosure. If you do not care about the last tenth of a percent of accuracy or the occasional unreadable track, you can just get pretty much any external USB-connected DVD drive.

 

[Tre2023]

Apple Superdrive on eBay?

 

[Paul7777x]

Thank you. I’ll buy one from the first list and a case for it.

 

[Everett T]

Thank you. I’ll buy one from the first list and a case for it.

And build a RAID server (if you've got 2tb or more) so you don't lose them again I've got too much music and too many movies plus the time invested in ripping them to lose them over drive failures. Hard drive prices should start coming back down again soon and enclosures cost very little. I set mine up for remote access via the Internet for when I travel.

 

[LTig]

I'm very happy with my Pioneer BD drive (BDR-212M). So far it ripped every disk, even those the LG DVD drive couldn't.

 

[Redacted]

Seriously, any £15 no brand USB drive from Amazon is fine.
I've used two for several years with a laptop with nothing less than perfect rips (if you believe accurip). One got donated to my son, hence two.
Try a few rips, and if it doesn't work, get the refund.

 

[Brian Hall]

I use an old external usb Samsung dvd drive I paid about $25 for new. I ripped over 600 CDs with it and it still works great. No need to waste money buying an expensive drive to rip CDs.

 

[SKBubba]

And build a RAID server (if you've got 2tb or more) so you don't lose them again I've got too much music and too many movies plus the time invested in ripping them to lose them over drive failures. Hard drive prices should start coming back down again soon and enclosures cost very little. I set mine up for remote access via the Internet for when I travel.

Raid is not backup.

 

[Everett T]

Raid is not backup.

I know, redundancy works for me.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

I use an old external usb Samsung dvd drive I paid about $25 for new. I ripped over 600 CDs with it and it still works great. No need to waste money buying an expensive drive to rip CDs.

This is music to my ears. But my situation is a little tricky: I have a huge archive of CDRs, mostly 20+ years old, from noncommercial and underground music, live shows, home recordings, etc., stuff that was never released in more professional formats.
I understand ripping software plays a big role, but should I also be shopping for a special drive? It needs to be external since I'll hook it to a Mac Mini.
Anyone here able to advise me?

 

[Petrushka]

The software guarantees accuracy.

Is theoretically possible that a better drive is faster.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

The software guarantees accuracy.

Is theoretically possible that a better drive is faster.

So the cd drive / physical laser doesn't matter at all? any cd drive I use will be fine as long as I use the best available software? Even with old CD-Rs?

 

[Daverz]

So the cd drive / physical laser doesn't matter at all? any cd drive I use will be fine as long as I use the best available software? Even with old CD-Rs?

It does matter in my experience: a disc that has read problems in one drive may rip without problems in another.

That said, I use a cheapo external USB DVD drive that rarely gives me problems. Just make sure you use ripping software that supports rip verification with Accurip or the CueTools Database. Or install cuetools, which can verify rips on disk, and can even repair them in some cases.

 

[levimax]

I have been ripping used thrift store cd's for over 20 years and my experience is that there is a difference in the reading ability of some drives on damaged CD's (they all work fine on new CD's) the list previosly posted is a good resource. One thing I have learned, which not everyone agrees with, is that it is almost always a waste of time to rip CD's in secure mode. If the CD is damaged going back and re-reading the damaged sections takes forever, burns out the drive, and almost never works. I get much better results ripping in burst mode which relies on the drive's built in error correction. Rips of damaged discs may not be bit perfect but 90% of the time will play through without any issues where as error recovery fails at least 90% of the time and if it fails there are audible issues 100% of the time.

 

[RandomEar]

Seriously, any £15 no brand USB drive from Amazon is fine.
I've used two for several years with a laptop with nothing less than perfect rips (if you believe accurip). One got donated to my son, hence two.
Try a few rips, and if it doesn't work, get the refund.

Even the the cheapest USB drives work fine, that's true. But those from the top of the list are extremely resistant to read errors from scratched or otherwise damaged discs and they often handle some old school copy protection mechanisms better than a random no-name USB drive.

I have one random Samsung USB DVD writer and one from that list in a slim USB enclosure. Since I got the one from the list used (probably taken out of a notebook someone scrapped), both drives cost about the same. But the Samsung one failed to read some tracks on at least two of my discs correctly. The "self-build" one read all of them and was faster on the damaged discs.

There is a difference.

 

[LTig]

So the cd drive / physical laser doesn't matter at all? any cd drive I use will be fine as long as I use the best available software? Even with old CD-Rs?

No, the drive matters. As I wrote above my LG DVD drive failed to rip a few CDs. A friend suggested the Pioneer and I boght it and it ripped all CDs just fine, and faster as well. In my older PCs I used a Plextor drive with SCSI connection; those were famous for ripping everything. Software used was CD Paranoia on Linux.

 

[Ruediger]

It comes down to what CDs have to be ripped. All in NOS condition because only ripped once and not decades old? I have never had problems with any drive in that case, from the oldest internal to cheapest USB external and even with slow bluray-writers.

If the material has challenges def. get one of the top capable drives from the list. Ripping failures can be very disappointing and cost time.

 

[Redacted]

Raid is not backup.

Correct. And the poster never claimed this.

It will protect you against a single drive failure in an array (RAID5) or two drive failures (RAID6). It works well. Plus, muliptiple striped disks are a lot faster, if that matters for users.

Frankly, for the extra cost, I see no point in a NAS unless you can run RAID on it (even running RAID1 with two disks is worth it for the cost, compared with the cost of the inconvenience if a drive fails).

Having spent 10 years as SVP of Engineering for a company making petabyte storage systems which had no single point of failure, we gave the same message - you still need on-site backups and off-site backups (plural).

At home I have two RAID units (domestic ones) and both are double-backed up (they clearly both risk multiple single point of system failure).. In the last 14 years, I have had a single HDD become totally dead, and two that got flagged as "struggling". Easily replaced, but long build times, during which time a RAID5 unit is vulnerable to another drive failure, but the statistics are in your favour. Nevertheless, if you have two copies of the affected drive or data, you are usually OK. One of my RAID units spent 5.5 years travelling about in a caravan that was my only home - zero issues - and that was HDDs, and not SSDs which at the time were not cost-justifiable for me. Still not, for my bigger 24TB main system! Although I only use SSDs for individual PC drives, and for TV etc.

N.B. music is only a small part of what I store. We used to have 7 PCs in the house, all boot-image backed-up as well as all the data drive content from them.

 

[Ruediger]

A 2-drive NAS with RAID1 and a free DLNA server is never a bad idea. It can also automate backups to external drives.

Movies and TV shows are a bigger challenge IMO. Getting into the dozens of TB fast with a serious collection. RAID5 or 6 is the measurement of choice.