Recommendation for an external CD drive?

In my experience, the standard Apple external drive works very well and is reasonably priced.  Opinions here may differ, however.

I'm a big Apple fan, but I must beg to differ here..... Its rubbish.

I've owned three of these over the past few years, OK one died after dropping it, but I just used a new Superdrive to rip 350 CDs. 30 of them failed to read, and it was getting progressively worse, so one disc in 4 was failing. I've just replaced it with a Samsung SE-208 and read all my failed discs.

It was also half the price.....

I've no idea if it will work with a Mac, but I use a slimline Samsung drive (cost around £30 a few years back) and it has worked brilliantly for ripping and burning CD's and DVD's - no problems at all. I must say though that if I owned a Mac I would go for Apple's own drive, which is surely optimised for use with their computers.

Peter

Thanks so far. Regarding Apple's SuperDrive, I've read some negative comments on amazon. But I think a Samsung drive will be OK.

Seems like Samsung is the preferred drive for ripping into PC....

I also use a samsung slim portable  dvd/cd drive (SE-S084C) with PC for about 2 years without any problem. Maybe i am lucky or maybe samsung drives are reliable.

chamik,

Yes that's the same model that I have and it's excellent. I even dropped it once (ouch!) but it has continued to work perfectly.

Peter

Based on the suggestions I've got a Samsung drive now (SE-218). Apart from the first CD I tried, which happened to be defective, it rips really fast (from 4x speed on the inner sectors to 20x on the outer ones). XLD could successfully use Accurate RIP with this drive. 

The eject button on the Apple keyboard does not work (works only with internal drives). The "silver" case is in fact grey and does not match the Mac Mini. Pregap detection takes some time with XLD.

I think it's a good drive for ripping.