OWC Mercury Pro 16X Blu-ray, 16X DVD, 48X CD Read/Write Solution

I was given a computer without a 5.25 bay for a bluray drive so I was going to buy a tower case and swap the computer. Then I thought thats too much to do and will cost quite a bit of time and money. I was going to settle for a flimsy portable drive before looking for a 5.25 external enclosure. So I bought this and a full size drive. At first I thought this enclosure was over priced but I wanted a full size drive and when comparing, the cost of this enclosure and a drive wasnt drastically different than buying a portable drive. This enclosure works great, is solidly built, and the drive and enclosure screw holes all line up perfectly. I just had shoulder surgery and assembled everything flawlessly with one hand. Plugged it in, connected it to the computer, and it worked perfectly. Now I have a full size portable disc writer.

do people buy these anymore? I rarely use this drive but when I need it...it works.

I was going to rate this one star, because what I received was NOT what was pictured. I was under the impression this came with an LG burner, and found a no branded Super Multi drive instead. I decided to try it out anyway. To the drives credit, it was completely plug and play. I had zero issues using it with my burning software or connecting it. While it has no functionality issues, and does not run the least bit hot, I am still irritated that I did not receive what was pictured. But I have burned roughly 40 discs on it so far, both single and dual layer Bluray discs without a single problem, so that is the reason for the four stars, it does exactly what I bought it for. I will update this review periodically.

This product by OWC is built for Apple/ Mac users. It will work without having to download drivers or jumping through added steps like products built for Windows but will also work on IOS products. Save yourself some time and extra set up headaches and get this product if you are a Apple/Mac user.

This Mercury Pro 5.25 Optical Drive External enclosure has worked very nicely. My only concern is that you need to be sure your ODD is short enough to fit. The first ODD I grabbed from my supply was too long to fit. However, I had a slightly shorter ODD on hand that fit perfectly and works like a charm.

TL;DR - works as expected and if you need an external USB DVD/Blu-Ray and already have a drive, its less expensive than a new external drive. I recently built a new workstation, and ended up finding a case I _really_ liked. The drawback? No 5.25 bay for an optical drive. This little box solved my problem ... I installed my BD-RE drive (LG WH16N560) into the housing, then plugged the housing in and connected the USB cable. Works like a charm. The only major drawback is the provided USB cable is _short_, around 2 feet. The connector on the housing is a B(?) connector, so its not like I have a longer cable lying around to use instead. However, cables are inexpensive. Another quirk is the rubber grommets in the holes used to mount the drive to the housing are pretty wimpy and I had to be really careful when tightening screws to avoid tearing them.

Very happy with this purchase...moved away from a desk top PC to a 16 inch MacBook Pro...still need to be able to rip my movies to my NAS for plex use...this allowed me to repurpose my current Blu Ray R/W drive. Could be the M1 Pro chip or the Mac OS vs Windows OS or maybe the USB 3.0, but drive seems to function quicker. I have Blu Ray read only drive I may purchase another enclosure for because of how well this enclosure functions.

Computer cases no longer come with a bay for an optical drive. I guess so many people have abandoned it for USB drives and online storage. However, I still find myself using an optical drive a lot for burning CDs, DVDs and Blu Rays as well as playing them so I had to find a way to accommodate one into my system. Because they are faster than the available external drives, I decided to use an internal drive with an external enclosure. This enclosure is well built, easy to use, looks nice and fit an LG internal disc drive with no issues. I like the fact that it has an easily accessible on/off switch so it is not drawing power when I dont need it. Recommended!

I successfully burned a dozen BDR M-Discs using this drive, and they all passed their integrity tests 100%. Everything went flawlessly. I used K3B on Manjaro Linux (KDE) for the software. The USB enclosure works perfectly as plug-n-play, out of the box, and the drive within had a success rate of 100%, with full verification, of engraving a dozen write-once M-Discs. (I even made ECC files for the ISOs using dvdisaster version 0.79.9) I might update this post to see how well it works with BDXL M-Discs (100GB). For those of us archiving irreplaceable memories for future generations, I recommend you leave extensive notes within the sleeve or jewel case of your engraved M-Disc so that whoever comes across it will have full instructions on how to read the data, while understanding the technology and history behind it. Maybe make a time capsule and include a USB cable, type-A to type-C USB adapter, a Blu-ray burner/drive, and power cable (such as this one), and anything else that someone long into the future could use. Remember, technology moves fast. There will come a time where its plausible that USB (of any form) no longer exists; Blu-ray players are no longer manufactured and its rare to find any in working condition; the x86 CPU architecture is no longer used in any computer systems; and so on. Dont believe me? How easy is it to come across a working Hi8 player without sacrificing too much cash? How easy will it be to come across working VHS players 10 or 20 years from now? How easy is it to retrieve the audio from reel-to-reel tapes? All of these things were readily accessible within the generations of people alive today in their childhood years. Thats not very far into our past as humans! So consider what 50, 100, 200 years from now will look like? Will someone be able to read what you engraved on your M-Disc? Will they have the software and hardware to do so? Just because the disc is still in pristine condition and the data exists in a perfect state of bits and bytes, theres no guarantee that someone will be able to retrieve whats on it. Make it as easy as possible for future generations, whatever it takes. Good luck. As for the drive and enclosure itself, it feels rugged and well built. The chassis is metal, feels like brushed aluminum, and the bottom side has four plastic rises to reduce vibration while it is in use. Of all the options on the market, this is very likely the best one out there.

OWC Mercury Pro Bluray Read / Write There is not much to say, except this is a high quality device. I have a Dell OptiPlex desktop computer. Just simply plugged the Bluray re-writer into a good USB port, plug the power pack into a 120volt outlet, flip the power switch on and youre ready to go. Has a high quality brushed metal case with an easy to load disc tray. Good work guys! I would buy it again. I wish all devices work well as this does!