
Other extras: All the drives we tested came with one-year warranties and claimed to support the archival M-DISC format, though we didn’t test those claims.But if a drive comes with decent playback and burning software, that’s a plus. Free (but potentially illegal) solutions are available for all of those problems, which we cover in the Playing DVDs and Blu-rays section. But macOS can’t play Blu-rays without extra software, Windows 10 can’t play Blu-rays or DVDs, and neither operating system includes software for burning video discs that you can play in DVD or Blu-ray players. Usable software: Both Windows 10 and macOS offer tools for burning data to DVDs and Blu-ray discs, and macOS still includes a DVD player app for playing video discs.Sturdiness: Few external disc drives are pretty, but the case shouldn’t fall apart under light pressure, the connections shouldn’t be wobbly, and the buttons should work when you press them.Here is practical method to boot from USB and to recover lost data when the Mac becomes unbootable.
#USB OPTICAL DRIVE FOR MAC MINI DRIVERS#
#USB OPTICAL DRIVE FOR MAC MINI MOVIE#
Noise: All optical drives make noise, but the drive shouldn’t drown out the movie or show you’re trying to watch.Price: A good DVD drive shouldn’t cost more than $40, and a good Blu-ray drive should cost around $100.But if you’re burning or ripping discs, the rate at which a drive can move data from your computer’s hard drive to the disc or vice versa becomes more important. Speed: If all you’ll use your drive for is playing discs, just about any drive you buy will perform similarly.


We didn’t require Blu-ray drives to support reading and writing to Ultra HD (or UHD, or 4K) Blu-ray discs, but we considered it a nice bonus if you didn’t have to pay much more for that feature. Read and write capability: DVD drives must read and write DVDs and CDs, and Blu-ray drives must read and write Blu-rays, DVDs, and CDs.
