24x USB External Slim CD-ROM Drive (Black)

by Generic

Product Details

• Item Weight: 0.3 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B001B1796U
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #23 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > External Components > Optical Drives
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 12, 2008

Product Description

Achieve the ideal for notebook computers! This external CD-ROM drive features a USB interface and a data transfer rate up to 24x! Additional features include a 100 ms average access time and a 128 KB buffer. The stylish black bezel and its compact size make this external CD-ROM drive the perfect upgrade for your notebook or PC. Get yours today!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars NOT a DVD drive but perfectly good generic CD drive, May 10, 2009

By 

A. Dent "Aragorn" (Minas Anor, GD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 24x USB External Slim CD-ROM Drive (Black) (Electronics)

It could be used to add CD-reading capabilities to a netbook or maybe as an additional USB-connected CD drive.

This must be emphasized because, these days, we tend to assume that what we used to call the 'CD drive' would allow us to watch movies on our computers. It is not the case with this device which is solely a CD-ROM drive. It will play music off your CDs and it will read any files stored on CDs but it will NOT recognize the DVD format.

As a CD drive, it performed flawlessly when connected through the USB port on my Vista machine.

You will find the following in the box:

- the CD drive itself
- USB cable to connect to computer
- cable to connect to external power supply (not needed and external power supply is not provided)
- mini CD disk with drivers (not needed in my case)
- 3-paragraph 'manual'

Worth mentioning:

- drive is very slim - 1/4"
- on my Vista laptop installation was automatic and the drive was recognized immediately
- a USB 2.0 port appears to provide all the power the drive may need
- a second 'power cable' is provided for just in case your USB interface can't provide sufficient power but there is no power supply

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great customer service, April 2, 2009

By 

Yahtzee! (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: 24x USB External Slim CD-ROM Drive (Black) (Electronics)

This item arrived quickly, but I had a problem with it and posted this feedback, (which I'm altering now.) The seller contacted me within maybe an hour of posting feedback and worked to make me happy with my purchase, which I now am. I would rate Matt at Westronics a 5 out of 5--he's a good guy.

It's small and compact, moreso than I expected, which was nice. it comes with two cables, an A to B USB, and an odd little USB to power port cable that I've never seen. This seems odd because it draws power from the A to B cable enough to run the CD rom, and with the USB to power port cable, there is no data transfer...so what good is it? (weird)

The instructions consist of a small card, half of it is in English, and basically says "plug it in, and it should work, if not, load the disk (how, if it doesn't work?) and run the program." I'm paraphrasing, but it's minimal info. Not a problem because the unit is plug and play--you won't need much info.

The problem I was having with it was when I tried to eject the cd--there is a small button and a light (neither of which seem to work on my unit.) The unit does not have the slide out tray, as most laptops have, or is depicted in the picture above, but the disk slides in through the opening much like on a car's cd player. I put the disk in and said a prayer it wouldn't get stuck in there, with me having to return the stupid $24 drive with my Acrobat PDF writer program in it!!! (or break apart this $24 drive in order to salvage my dang disk!) It didn't get stuck, but I do have to eject from the "my computer" menu, right clicking on the "eject" option...this works fine, so it doesn't bother me.

This problem would probably bug me, if, say, I were using it every day, but for the infrequency of use I have planned (loading Word and PDF writer on my netbook) it did the trick. I would rate it a 4.5 (but amazon won't let me change the 3 star rating I originally gave it) because of the customer service I received from Matt at Westronics, who worked quickly and without qualms to right the wrong.

I would recommend this unit to anyone looking for an inexpensive way to get stuff onto a netbook, for sure.
I hope this helps :)

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect, October 18, 2008

By 

Morosco (Richmond, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 24x USB External Slim CD-ROM Drive (Black) (Electronics)

Worked perfectly right out of the box. Plugged it in and my computer instantly "saw" it. No software needed. Just plug and play. I bought this to replace a finicky drive on my CPU and this solution is DRAMATICALLY cheaper.