How Does an External CD Burner Work?

Connecting the External Device

An external CD burner offers the same features as an internal burner, though with a more secure case to help protect its components from damage. Most external CD burners require you to plug them in using a separate power cord from your computer, though some models may be able to draw power directly from the connection to your computer. The majority of external CD burners utilize a USB connection, meaning that you simply have to plug it into a USB port in order to connect it to your computer. A large number of burners also allow you the option of connecting them via an external SATA port (though this of course requires you to have a computer with an SATA port accessible from outside the case). A smaller number of external CD burners may also be connected via FireWire connections (though these are not common because FireWire is not as popular of a connection format as USB or eSATA).

A drivers for an external CD burner will most likely be automatically loaded by your operating system as soon as the operating system (OS) recognizes the newly-connected device as a CD drive; for optimal playback and recording, take the time to install the drivers that came with the CD burner in place of the generic drivers used by the OS. The driver only needs to be installed once, even if you remove the CD burner and plug it in again later.

Reading CDs

Once connected, an external CD burner appears as another CD-ROM drive to your computer. Any disc placed in it can be accessed via Explorer (for PCs), Finder (for Macs) or similar disc navigation systems within the OS. Unless the drivers for the burner do not allow the feature, you should be able to utilize AutoPlay for any disc placed within the CD burner as well. Though the drive will read data at the speed indicated on the drive packaging, the speed at which it can transfer this data to your computer depends on the type of connection that you are using. (SATA will offer the fastest connection, though this will depend upon the type of SATA port used. Likewise, USB 2.0 will offer faster transfer than USB 1.1 or 1.0.)

Burning CDs

Any program on your computer capable of burning CDs will be able to make use of the external CD burner. Again, the data transfer rate will depend upon the type of port used to connect the drive to the computer. Using third-party software generally results in a faster burn than using OS components such as the built-in burning functions of Explorer, though non-Windows systems such as Mac OS X feature faster native burning. In order to burn CDs that can have more data or music placed on them at a later date, you will need to make sure that the discs used are CD-RW instead of simply CD-R.