After several enquires of how DVD burners perform in an external case I persuaded my favourite on line retailer to provide me with one to review.

This case is a Sumvision external case with Firewire & USB2 interfaces the chipset is the Prolific PL-3507. The case is finished in a light grey plastic with a clear acrylic outer and the two removable side panels are black. The case came with full supporting fixing hardware:-
Spare short 80way/40 pin IDE lead
3 packets of assorted fixing screws suitable for Optical Drives Hard Drives and plastic fixing
A small no 1 point Xpoint screwdriver
Firewire and USB Leads
Power Supply with standard PC mains lead with a wired 13a plug and an integral DC output lead with a 6 pin mini din plug to fit the socket on the rear of the case.
Unfortunately this 6 pin plug is the same as the standard PS2 plugs used on the PC keyboard and mouse and will fit into these sockets on the PC, DOING SO WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY DAMAGE YOUR MOTHERBOARD so be aware of this.

The user guide is very basic and the translation is poor but it is sufficient to get the case up & running. First make sure the drive you are connecting is set by the jumpers as MASTER. To open the case remove the two small no1 Xpoint screws that are securing the side panels at the rear of the unit & gently peal the side panel away from the unit until all the clips are clear and then slide this forward to remove it, do this with both side panels. The case top will now come off and the front vent can be removed and saved for future use. Inside the case all the electronics are mounted on PCB on the rear panel which is slotted between the bottom & top of the case. This PCB has three chips on it the main one being the Prolific PL-3507. There is a short 80wire/40 pin cable already connected to the plug on the PCB to which is connected the DVD power cable and a small fan mounted on the rear panel. The USB2 & 2x firewire connectors are mounted on the PCB and outlet at the rear of the case, there is also a 3.5mm stereo jack socket with a wire & connector to connect to the CD audio output from the drive. The connections to the DVD drive are simple to work out Power which is a low profile T connector to allow space between the drive & the rear of the housing. The 40pin connector fits into the rear of the drive and is keyed to prevent wrong orientation, The ribbon is split in several places to easily enable it twisting in its short length and finally the audio 4pin connector is connected to the audio out of the drive. make sure none of these wires come in contact with the fan so as not to foul it.
The drive is mounted underneath with 4 screws out of the 8 provided, the screws are in labelled bags so the correct ones can easily be identified sliding the drive up to the front recess the screws can be secured but I personally left them slightly loose until the final assembly so that the drive could be positioned correctly. Put the top of the case in position making sure the rear panel fits correctly in the groves, slide the side panels on and gently press the clips into place (I found this was helped by pulling the two halves of the case apart slightly). Once clipped into place refit the two small screws into the rear of the side panels

Well that's the drive fitted into the case now to get it working the power connector is connected into the rear of the case and the PSU powered up. The unit is plug & play and I am using "Windows XP" service pack 2 so I just plug in either of the Firewire or USB leads into my PC and away we go. The drive was immediately recognized by the system when I connected the USB but on several occasions I had to power cycle the unit for it to be fully functional with Firewire.

I tested the units burning capabilities at 16x speed with some known good 16x speed DVD-R media and tried it with 3 different drives for comparison and below are the results

Only the Pioneer DVR-109 was able to reach its maximum burning speed but even this took longer than it took the LG drive to burn at reduced maximum speed. The maximum read speed was restricted to 13x when using the NEC drive but I doubt if this would be any effect on the other drives which do not reach this reading speed.

With the Pioneer drive this unit works satisfactory and produces the same quality burns in the same time as a standard IDE connected drive. As for the other drives 12x speed is the maximum capabilities for this unit meaning that it can take up to 20 seconds longer to burn the disc. The reason for the Pioneer to be able to reach full burning speed I put down to it operating in UDMA4 mode as opposed to UDMA2 with the other drives (I may be wrong and am open to criticism here)

This unit is easy to set up and performs well with all drives up to 12x speed burning in both USB2 & Firewire mode and represents good value for money for someone who wants portability of his burner.

WARNING
Although you should be able to satisfactory upgrade the drives firmware with the drive in this unit
IT IS NOT RECCOMENDED due to the fact that the USB or Firewire Bus can reset during the upgrade process and if this happens at a critical time the drive will be rendered useless.
So I advise that when updating the firmware you put the drive into a PC correctly connected to the IDE interface
You have been WARNED