A USB drive to cope with fat vintage CD's?

TheFlash

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I use an Apple Superdrive into my Mac and it works fast and faultlessly. However, over the last few months I've been ripping quite a few CD's from the early years of the format and they're much fatter/thicker than most which came later. My Superdrive objects: it either gets incredibly nosiy as it spins up to speed or it rejects the disc and spits it out.

It's not worth a major investment as it's for a single rip of each of a handful of CD's, but if anyone has affordable suggestions for a drive they have used themselves to rip fat CD's then I'd love to hear about it. Thanks.
 

tuga

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I use an Apple Superdrive into my Mac and it works fast and faultlessly. However, over the last few months I've been ripping quite a few CD's from the early years of the format and they're much fatter/thicker than most which came later. My Superdrive objects: it either gets incredibly nosiy as it spins up to speed or it rejects the disc and spits it out.

It's not worth a major investment as it's for a single rip of each of a handful of CD's, but if anyone has affordable suggestions for a drive they have used themselves to rip fat CD's then I'd love to hear about it. Thanks.

I was lucky to snatch a new old stock full-size LaCie d2 DVD±RW off eBay for a fiver a few years ago.
Ripping is a very labour-intensive task and I have had the internal optical drives from first a MacBook Pro and then an iMac malfunction (would fail to read the last bit of the disc).

At the time I also considered the full-sized Buffalo DVD drive but could never find a used one.
 
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TheFlash

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I was lucky to snatch a new old stock full-size LaCie d2 DVD±RW off eBay for a fiver a few years ago.
Ripping is a very labour-intensive task and I have had the internal optical drives from first a MacBook Pro and then an iMac malfunction (would fail to read the last bit of the disc).

At the time I also considered the full-sized Buffalo DVD drive but could never find a used one.
I had a LaCie hard drive once, a thing of beauty…. But do either of these take thicker than average discs? I guess not being a slot drive sh probably be my first criterion.
 

tuga

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I had a LaCie hard drive once, a thing of beauty…. But do either of these take thicker than average discs? I guess not being a slot drive sh probably be my first criterion.

These are old style drawer mechanics, you can probably make it work with 2 stacked CDs
 
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bencat

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Not a thing of beauty but hugely efficient and quick at ripping cd's whatever the thickness is an Iomega CD/Rom . If you are not in a hurry then I have a spare one you can borrow for as long as you need it . Can bring it to the show .
 

TheFlash

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Not a thing of beauty but hugely efficient and quick at ripping cd's whatever the thickness is an Iomega CD/Rom . If you are not in a hurry then I have a spare one you can borrow for as long as you need it . Can bring it to the show .
That would be Wamtastic, Andrew!

I guess if I got myself organised and there happened to be someone at the show with a computer… I could dig out my “too fat, gave up” CDs and bring some blanks to make copies there and then. But that would mean me being organised. Oh well🙄
 

Tony_J

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That would be Wamtastic, Andrew!

I guess if I got myself organised and there happened to be someone at the show with a computer… I could dig out my “too fat, gave up” CDs and bring some blanks to make copies there and then. But that would mean me being organised. Oh well🙄
I will be bringing a USB dvd/cd drive - stick a few blank CDs in yer car & job's a good un...
 

lazycat

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Not a thing of beauty but hugely efficient and quick at ripping cd's whatever the thickness is an Iomega CD/Rom .
Thanks to your rec I've just received one from eBay. It is bigger than my laptop 😁, but boy does it rip quickly.

I was pretty fed-up with old lappy drives in a caddy.
 
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TheFlash

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That would be Wamtastic, Andrew!

I guess if I got myself organised and there happened to be someone at the show with a computer… I could dig out my “too fat, gave up” CDs and bring some blanks to make copies there and then. But that would mean me being organised. Oh well🙄
Massive shoutout to Andrew @bencat for bringing along his real man's drive. Yet to be put to work but tomorrow beckons! Great to see you again, big man.
 
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bencat

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Nigel really sorry I did not get much time to see you or listen to your system things got very frazzled trying to get anything playing in my room and I end up with tunnel focus and ignore everything else . Going to be the same today as I put my system back together . I am sure the battle tank Iomega will impress and like I said no rush I have one on my desk and will be having a tipping time with the cd,s I bought at the show .
 
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DomT

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Massive shoutout to Andrew @bencat for bringing along his real man's drive. Yet to be put to work but tomorrow beckons! Great to see you again, big man.
Nigel I also borrowed @bencat Iomega drive. It’s a lot quicker than the Apple SuperDrive. Have fun. Are you using DBPoweramp to manage the rips?
 

TheFlash

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I found DBPoweramp such a more faster, easy and pleasurable experience than iTunes.
Are you an Apple Mac/Macbook user? Does/can it rip in ALAC?

I have happily used iTunes (now Apple Music) for years and can't be arsed to learn a new interface; I'm not sure how DBPoweramp can be faster as it's down to drive speed, surely?

We all have our preferences and I know many who "prefer" DBPoweramp have never used Apple Music/iTunes because they don't use Apple computers because it's against their religion :) At least you've tried both before expressing a preference!

ALAC and FLAC are sonically the same. I like to assign (copy and paste) my own album art. I know how to do all of this in iTunes/Music.
 

bencat

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I have used iTunes and hate it with a vengence as it never does what I ask it too and stores everything in a way that only iTunes can sort. dBPoweramp can rip in ALAC as well as FLAC . It also has in my view better tagging and cover art identification . iTunes only gets things right if the music is on Apple Music anything not on there was just not found . At one time this included the Beatles albums which for a long time never on Apple Music . This all goes away if you use iTunes as your player etc for your Library but as I use LMS iTunes mucks up everything on the Library searches and just makes life harder. Fully agree there is nothing sound quality wise between ALAC and FLAC it is just that FLAC files are recognised by almost everything else like my DAP , Phone and Tablet and even my car while ALAC will not play on two of those . So as always if your digisytem is Apple based then you are fine if you are a heretic and use none Aplle products then things are much harder .
 

TheFlash

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I have used iTunes and hate it with a vengence as it never does what I ask it too and stores everything in a way that only iTunes can sort.
Irrelevant for me as I use iTunes to rip but use BluOS to play.
dBPoweramp can rip in ALAC as well as FLAC .
Good to know.
It also has in my view better tagging and cover art identification .
Not bothered about tagging. I do my album art manually as I’m OCD about getting the same art as the case I have in front of me!
iTunes only gets things right if the music is on Apple Music anything not on there was just not found .
Not my experience at all.
At one time this included the Beatles albums which for a long time never on Apple Music . This all goes away if you use iTunes as your player etc for your Library but as I use LMS iTunes mucks up everything on the Library searches and just makes life harder.

Fully agree there is nothing sound quality wise between ALAC and FLAC it is just that FLAC files are recognised by almost everything else like my DAP , Phone and Tablet and even my car while ALAC will not play on two of those .
If I could choose, I’d choose FLAC for portability but in my real world (Apple phone, Apple tablet) it’s irrelevant. In fact as I use BluOS, I could use FLAC just as well and do eg. F K J album which I downloaded.
So as always if your digisytem is Apple based then you are fine if you are a heretic and use none Aplle products then things are much harder .
See above! 😊
 
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tuga

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I have used iTunes and hate it with a vengence as it never does what I ask it too and stores everything in a way that only iTunes can sort.

Maybe you can't speak iTunish?
I have no such issues, and find that it stores everything neatly for me. Like @TheFlash I add covers manually and the auto-tagging is perfectly adequate for jazz or rock.
 
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