External DVD Burner w/ Lightscribe - any help with non-LaCie?

Does that drive come with it's own power supply? The problem with some USB-only devices is that they rely on the USB bus for power, and there isn't enough juice on the Powerbook USB to power all devices. We typically see this with hard drives, they either don't spin up or they spin up and won't mount. In these cases, the solution is to get an external power supply, or some try cables that attach into both USB ports. Firewire devices don't have that concern.

The manual for your I/O Magic drive isn't on their web site, so I couldn't see if it comes with a power supply. Also, they say there are no downloadable drivers for that drive, so not sure what's on the mini-CD, unless Windows requires a driver. And you're right, don't put that mini-CD in your Powerbook.

I looked over drives at http://www.newegg.com, and most indicated Windows compatibility and, sadly, not mac - although there were a few. One place where you can find firewire/usb DVD recorders that work with macs is at OWC at http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/optical-drives/ ... Perhaps there is something there that will work for you.

Before you give up all hope...

When you plug the drive into the USB ports, go up to the Apple menu and select "About this Mac". Hit the More info.. button. Select Disc burning. Do you see anything? If you do see something, see if it lists the drive as "unsupported" anywhere. If it does, what that means is that you won't be able to burn discs from the Finder, Drive Utility, iTunes, iDVD, etc. One thing that might work is to use a utility called PatchBurn ( http://www.patchburn.de/) if you are pre 10.5. If all goes well, it will create a device profile if it recognizes the drive. You have nothing to lose at this point since the software is donation ware. Reboot. Go back the Apple Menu again. If it lists the drive as "Vendor Supported" you are set to go.

Note that these device profiles are not really drivers/kernel extensions per se. They simply tell OS X the characteristics of the drive. If this does not work for you, you may still be able to use the drive with a third party burning application such as Toast.

Now if you are running Leopard, PatchBurn won't work. Word I've seen on the net is that it isn't needed anymore, so the drive may work as is.

Just to add to this.

OfficeMax has a similar sale this week with Lite-On drives. My mother in law needs to have an internal drive replaced on her PC. This drive is clearly marked as PC only. Just for kicks, I went through the process in my post above. PatchBurn did it's job under 10.4.11 and the Finder in Leopard saw the drive just fine without any extra help.

So this stuff can work. Now the catch is this was through an internal IDE interface. That external drive is USB; however, I don't see why this wouldn't work since most external firewire/USB drives have an IDE drive in them; a bridge makes it "firewire" or "USB".