External DVD drive speed

[MagR]

Hi

I’m thinking of replacing my internal DVD writer with an external unit which plugs in via USB 2.0. I run a watercooling loop and simply want to create more space for my reservoirs/pumps etc. My rig is used solely for gaming so my DVD writer is used for installing new games and backing up the occasional patch to disc.

My question concerns speed. Does anyone know whether the USB interface of an external drive slows game installation significantly compared to the SATA interface of an internal drive. I suspect the data transfer limitation is the DVD itself rather than the interface. Does anyone have first hand experience of this?

Thanks in advance

Regards

Mag

 

[nvalhalla]

DVD transfer speeds are pretty slow, shouldn't be noticeably slower externally. DVD 1x is 11Mbps, so 16x is only 176Mbps, which is 22 MBps.

 

[MagR]

Thanks for the info. I've done a bit of investigation and found that USB 2 has a theoretical speed of about 60MBps which drops to about 35MBps in practical applications. This means it far exceeds the DVD transfer speed so my proposed purchase will be fine. I had never realised how slow these older speeds were. I'm used to reading about SSD sequential read speeds in excess of 500MBps which is a different world!

Thanks again for your help

Regards

Mag