Best Dedicated CD Drive for Windows 10

[Girthy]

Hi,

I recently ran into an issue with an older CD from the 1980s returning read errors while using EAC. This led me to researching drives and I learned that dedicated CD drives tend to be far superior in read/write time than DVD or Blu-Ray drives. I want to get a dedicated CD drive that can run on Windows 10, but I don't know what sort of compatibility issues would pop up in older optical drives that only take CDs. I gather that Plextor and Yamaha made some of the best CD drives back in the day, although some drives are simply re-badges manufactured by lesser companies.

What can you all recommend? Are other brands like HP/Sony/Acer or Lite-On any good? I'm looking for something with at least 40x read speed or better. I've seen these models for sale that don't break the bank:
I/OMagic 52x24x52x
Plextor PX-S88TU

My preference is for an external drive, but I can work with an internal.

[Ian]

I really can't think of any companies still selling or manufacturing dedicated CD drives. You may be able to find some older drives on eBay or something but, keep in mind, they'll probably be a decade or more old at this point.

Plextor has always been one of the better manufacturers when it comes to ripping audio CDs. If I remember right, the PX-S88TU is not one of their designs. You may want to see if you can score one of their "Premier" CD or DVD drives.

I'm not as familiar with Pioneers drives, but they always promote their audio capabilities. You'll want to look at their older models though since they no longer make their DVD drives. Look for something that supports PureRead.

Otherwise, try one of Lite-On's newer DVD writers. They're cheap and work well.

[Girthy]

I really can't think of any companies still selling or manufacturing dedicated CD drives. You may be able to find some older drives on eBay or something but, keep in mind, they'll probably be a decade or more old at this point.

Yeah, and in that case, would this hardware still be compatible with Windows 10? Do you know anything about the Creative brand? I'm looking at older Premier drives by Plextor, but this stuff is pretty expensive for tech that isn't even guaranteed to work on modern computers.

And is I/O Magic any good?

[Ian]

Yeah, and in that case, would this hardware still be compatible with Windows 10? Do you know anything about the Creative brand? I'm looking at older Premier drives by Plextor, but this stuff is pretty expensive for tech that isn't even guaranteed to work on modern computers.

And is I/O Magic any good?

Are you talking about the Creative company that's behind the Soundblaster sound cards?

I/O Magic was (are they still around?) a distributor of computer components and accessories. They'd take a drive from say Lite-On, slap their logo on it and sell it at a big box retailer. There were a lot of companies like this back in the day. I/O Magic was no better or worse than the rest of them.

One issue you're going to run into with a lot of these older drives is that they're IDE. If you have a modern computer, chances are they don't have an IDE port. You're going to have to buy an IDE card or see if you can find an external USB enclosure.

[Girthy]

One issue you're going to run into with a lot of these older drives is that they're IDE. If you have a modern computer, chances are they don't have an IDE port. You're going to have to buy an IDE card or see if you can find an external USB enclosure.

I ended up purchasing an external LaCie CDR external drive. Unfortunately, it was not able to rip a CD giving me problems which I suspect has a mild form of CD rot. It worked without any problems on my Windows 10 laptop via USB 2.0 using the latest version of EAC (1.5).

This is pretty much my model but with a tan face plate:
https://www.lacie.com/files/lacie-conte ... drw_en.pdf

[Ian]

I ended up purchasing an external LaCie CDR external drive. Unfortunately, it was not able to rip a CD giving me problems which I suspect has a mild form of CD rot. It worked without any problems on my Windows 10 laptop via USB 2.0 using the latest version of EAC (1.5).

This is pretty much my model but with a tan face plate:
https://www.lacie.com/files/lacie-conte ... drw_en.pdf

Any idea what drive is in there? Looks like a Lite-On from some of the old reviews I found online.