I have a dell with one space for a cd drive. I want a burner. I am thinking of getting an external one to hook up with a usb cable. can anyone think of any major drawbacks to this? Should i buy an internal and replace the drive that is there or leave it and get the external ??? i know externals cost more but I'm willing to pay.

Also can you recommend brands and places to buy?

all advice is welcome.

internal, buy on newegg.com and save money.
usb 1.1 is slow.

External is slower then internal.

USB 2 or Firewire would be ok....but you have to make sure your computer supports it first. Internal is the way to go...much cheaper, and much faster.

Ok if I go internal, I have to replace my cd rom drive. Can I still burn CD to CD?

yes you can, if you make copy of cd to hard drive first.

Cut a hole in the top of the case for the cables to come out and duct tape an internal burner to the PC, Sometimes you just have to think outside the box.

I ALWAYS copy to the hard drive first. :)

Yeah, get yourself a nice internal burner with at least 52x read speed, 24x write, and 16x rewrite..you'll be thankful you did :)

Of course a x48 write, x12 rewrite, and a x48 read is good too, right :)

Get an external, you're driving at 8x. Get internal and can drive at 12x (OK so what if I'm not up to speed? :rollseyes::)

It'd be easy if you had drive expandability bays, instead of have just one.

Try a DVD/CD-RW combo. I got one...it isn't the fastest burner or the fastest reader but it is darn good. 32x12x10 and reads DVDs at 12x. Not bad since I found it on sale for 40 or 50 bucks.

And I always copy to hard drive first, also. I make no coasters that way while copying from CD to CD-RW was extremely chancey.