I purchased that drive today should arrive in 2 days. I am sure the external will own just as much as the internal model. The internal model that supports all of the same formats which is all of them was rated a 10/10 by maximumpc and every other review I have seen on it. I am sure you found many reviews on that model. I will give you my take on the external when it arrives. However I would not just use it on USB1.1 but spend some $ & get either a USB2.0 or firewire card since it will work with either. Better yet get an adaptec DuoConnect Combination firewire & USB2.0 Card. This will enable you to link up to 62 peripherals from two external and one internal FireWire ports and backwards compatible with USB1.1 & USB2.0 products. The card has 3 external ports and one internal port. I got the external drive for $382 with free shipping and you can get the combination card for under $100 or get a cheap 3 Port FireWire IEEE 1394 PCI Card w/Ti Chipset for $13. Id say if you have multiple systems which I assume anyone who would buy an external drive does the best & cheapest route would be to buy several PCI to IEEE 1394 FireWire Cards for each system. The firewire card has a 400 Mbps max transfer rate (50 MB/sec max). You can find cheap and very good firewire card at www.package2you.com scroll to the bottom where it says Everything Else. But if you like to waste $ on computer hardware like me hands down the combo card is the way to go and maybe get a few firewire cards for your lower end systems. I kinda went off on a tangent here but will post again once i test out the drive itself and I will be using both the firewire card I mentioned and the adaptec combo card when doing so. ZOoT
Found it on ecost.com. However i never purchased from them they said they have it in stock and also have free shipping which was a plus. Funny thing is when I went back to the site i couldnt find the drive LOL. But got my confirmation email the order went through so im hoping it will arrive Monday next week. I did purchase and install the combo card today so im ready to plug that burner in and got 2 cheap firewire cards for my other 2 systems. Id say give ecost a call if you dont find drive on the site. Obviously if it doesnt arrive early next week ill just cancel the order and get it elsewhere. I have seen the external model all over the place even at circuit city but your right the UL is not easy to find but i bet you can buy it right from sonystyle.com for $429 i think i saw it for. Here was my order Description: DRX500UL Dual DVD/CD RW/-RW Dual Format External Firewire & USB 2.0 Drive Sony's amazing new DRX-500UL is the first DVD recorder for your PC that brings together all the popular formats in a single drive: DVD-R/-RW and DVD+RW/+R, as well as CD-R and CD-RW. Quantity: 1 Price: $382.00
What do you guys think about a mobile solution of a two port USB2 pc card, a DRX500UL and a big USB2 external drive for cache? The laptop CPU and HD isn't very fast, and I am hoping to avoid churning the internal HD for no reason (like when you copy from network share to network share).
