DIGISTOR 5.25" DVD Burner Slot-Load SATA Drive

Nice drive. Loads a bit slower than other drives I own but it seems to take better care of the disk after several loads/ unloads. My other brands can leave tiny scratches on the disk after 30 or so uses (same CD/DVD), but not this one. I will buy this again when I need a slot-load. I've had good luck with Digistor products in the past.

While it is true that DIGISTOR offers the only PRE-ASSEMBLED slot-load DVD-R solution, one can build a better setup for less money. I went with the  Syba 5.25-Inch Bay Adapter for Slim Optical Drive with 2.5-Inch SATA3 6Gbs HDD/SSD hot-swap and 2 USB 3.0 Ports , and a  Panasonic UJ240 6x Blu-ray Burner BD-R/8x DVD±RW DL SATA Drive (Black)  which is the tray-load equivalent to the  DIGISTOR 5.25" Blu-ray Burner Slot-Load SATA Drive . A direct spec replacement for this device's optical drive would be the  Silverstone 12.7 mm Slot Load 8X CD/DVD-RW Drive SATA2 3Gbs - Black , which still brings the total to less than this device and gives you a hot-swap capable 2.5" drive bay and 2 front-side USB 3.0 ports. I'm really happy with my sub-one hundred dollar Bluray solution. I didn't want to give a bad review because I don't own the product, but I did want to tell others that there are other options.

The optical drive on my 1 yr-old desktop quite literally gave up on me -- it just wouldn't read my CDs and DVDs anymore, let alone burn and do my back ups. And so I asked my brother for help in replacing the optical drive. While we we're picking out what drives to order from Amazon, I told my brother "Wouldn't it be nice to have one of those drives that didn't have trays on my desktop?"He told me that they were called Slot Loading drives. We were afraid that they were not designed for desktops because I frequently saw them on my friends' laptops. After a bit of research, we finally came to the DIGISTOR website -- [...] -- and found that they had some for desktops. I ordered them off Amazon and now I've had them for at least 2 months now.It's been working wonderfully -- it reads all my CDs and DVDs, and burns my back ups as well. It's a speedy drive, I didn't have to wait as much as with my old DVD burner. My brother told me to be careful with the slot load mechanism, as there was no "emergency eject" hole on this one, but so far, no problems with it at all. I'm very satisfied with the product.

This is a laptop drive mounted in a half height, 5.25" adapter. I use it with a Linux machine (Debian Lenny) and find it reasonably fast and quiet. It mounts near the top of the 5.25" adapter, so consequently, the slot sits very high when compared to conventional DVD burners.The price is $30 more than conventional DVD burners, a difference not justified by its performance. If the unit lasts a few years, then the extra money will be worth it, as most burners give out in a little over a year in my house.