external dvd burner for older laptop?

My 5 year old Gateway 450 laptop doesn't burn dvds. It plays them and burns cds but not dvds. Do they make a dvd burner that would work for me through maybe a usb port? My usb is just 1.1 but I have a pc card for 2.0.

Running XP home version 2002 sp2 and ie7 . I googled some but it's not plain if they work with these older machines or not. Any suggestions appreciated.. (short of buying a new pc....

Chas.

 

I suggest that you look up the system requirements at the manufacturer's website before making the purchase. For example, the Philips External drive needs:

It may also make a temporary file of several gigabytes on the hard drive. I expect your 2002 machine would cover these, but it is better to check than be disappointed.

I would recommend that you get a self-powered hub to connect the drive to. The drive should have it's own power, but still, you should try to minimise any burden on the computer.

Matt

 

Burning and converting dvds is much more intensive - both for cpu and hard drive space ( creates image) than burning cds.
Unless you have a lot of hard drive space left over for the image to burn the dvds it would be a foolish exercise - never mind the horsepower of the cpu.
It may be cheaper right now to buy an external dvd than a cd just as they may be on sale.
To burn cds maybe but not dvds on your 5 year old laptop.
Besides that dvd players are marginal at burning cds as compared to cd burners.
Best not to waste your time and effort

 

Thank you Matt and Vision. This Q. came up because I had bought and downloaded DVD X Copy to copy a protected DVD that my DVD Recorder wouldn't copy. (Magnavox tape/DVD and DVD/tape recorder) Been several years since I read my Gateway book and had forgotten, or never noticed, that the laptop won't burn DVDs. I burn CDs with it.

How can this happen? Easily: I'm 70 years old...

Anyway, as vision pointed out and I just found out, it evidently takes about 8G of hdd space to get this 1 movie on my hdd which I don't have left on my 18G hdd. SOOO.. I guess I'll be posting to find out what's involved in putting a new hdd on this machine. I see some 60G hdds for just over $100. But they run at different speeds like 4500 rpm, 5400, 7200 etc. etc.

Hoo boy, there doesn't seem to be any end to the questions...!!!

Chas.

 

All depends on the age of your machine it makes a diffirence to your performance.
The newer drives are 7200 rpm and faster
Better for speed if they have a buffer
the first ones were a 2 mb buffer , later ones 8 and now 16
Most of the newer drives offer a long warranty and have at least an 8 mb buffer.
That is your best value overall
A faster drive with an 8 mb buffer made the most wallop of any upgrades I did on an athalon 2500 computer that I had .