Gotega External DVD Drive USB 3.0 Type C USB C Portable CD/DVD +/-RW Disk Drive External DVD Player for Laptop CD/DVD ROM Burner Reader Compatible with Desktop PC Windows Linux OS Apple Mac

I've had this for 2 years. It plays movies for me great, which is really all I bought it for. I plug it in and my movie pops up.Yesterday, it suddenly stopped working. I just had my techie teenager work on it, and he had it fixed in under 5 minutes. Apparently the cord inside had gotten disconnected, so I got a little lecture to not pull on the cord. Haha. I would rather give it 4.8 stars, because the cord is so short, so if I have my laptop on my lap and have to switch positions, I have to carefully reposition it too. That's the only drawback for me.

Worked absolutely perfectly. No downloads or updates needed on my PC. Plugged it in and it worked instantly. Read my old cds and dvds with no problem at all. Just what I needed.

Let me start by saying this should really be a 3 1/2 star rating, and if the drive writes as slowly as it reads I'd drop it to 3 stars.So first the good stuff:Drive is well packaged by the manufacturer and includes an instruction card that is actually useful and readable if you really need one.Plug and play worked perfect right out of the box on both Windows 10 Pro and Windows 11 Pro.Drive has an eject button (something ridiculously missing on other drives of this type) and even an emergency eject mechanism so kudos there as well.Drive played both music CDs and DVD movies quickly using VLC Media Player but getting them recognized was a bit of a jump through hoops situation (more on that below).Generous warranty (IF the manufacturer actually honors it).The not so good stuff:The drive is made of a cheap plastic and does not feel solid or well made.Instead of a drop in tray this drive uses the lower quality and less reliable snap-in type and you have to be very careful here because if you exert too much pressure I believe the tray will either break off or at the very least come out of it's sliders.You have to force the cable into a very narrow slot in the bottom to get the drive to sit flat (and believe me you want to to sit flat or the laser does NOT read the disc).Cable is EXTREMELY short. Even when using a laptop you have to have enough space right next to the laptop for the cable to reach. And you can't actually use it if your laptop is on your lap (Hence the name laptop). Could not use on either of my Desktop PCs, even the short tower without having to spend additional money for an extension cable.Reading data from a Disc is EXTREMELY SLOW. Insert a Disc and the drive spins up and makes noise fairly quick, then just seems to hang there for a LONG time like it's having trouble reading. At times the drive would disappear from the list of drives and then reappear after a LONG wait. Then it would be 7 - 10 minutes for the disc contents to finally show up. Click on what you want and the long process starts all over again before the content opens.Reading music CDs and DVDs was quicker but Windows Media Player and Movies and TV both reported "No data found on disc" errors and showed 0 Bytes. I had to install VLC Media Player for the disc to be recognized and played. Even then I did not get the usual popup asking me what I wanted to do with the disc. I had to go into the list of drives, right click this drive and then select the "Open With" option form the context menu and choose VLC Media Player to get them to play (Choosing either Windows Media Player or Movies and TV here still yielded the same errors mentioned above).Right-clicking the drive in the drive list gives an option to "Eject" but this simply ejects the disc from the drive, not the drive from the PC. And.........There is no option to "Safely Remove Drive" so make sure there is no disc in the drive before you disconnect it.Overall Impressions:Drive is okay for the price when it comes to reading discs as long as you have a LOT of patience and a little experience with how drives work on Windows. I have not tried writing any discs yet, but if the write times are as poor as the read times I don't think this drive would be worth the price even on sale.

I spent hours deliberating over all the choices Amazon had to offer. I'm not cheap, but I'm disabled and on a very limited budget, so I was leaning towards the low end of products to stay in my budget. I finally decided to try this product due to the 5 star reviews it got. Right out of the box, feels sturdy and well made. Virtually no setup, plug in the USB cable, and start doing whatever it is you want to do. The reason I needed a burner is most of my old copied music CD's were deteriorating, and I wanted to make new copies to keep in my truck. I was astonished at the speed this drive copied and burned my new CD's. I reproduced 9 albums in a little over 45 minutes. I am more than satisfied with those results. Also during the copy/burn process, I did not hesitate to abuse the drive a bit. Nothing violent, just average bumping, tapping, lifting and turning it, and not a glitch whatsoever, that is until I turned it upside down...It didn't like that...but picked up right where it left off, and had absolutely no effect on the quality of the burns.I also checked all of them and listened to 3 to their full length, and they all sound perfect.There are a couple of "Cons", but they are more than justified for the price and are easily accepted, or worked around. The first one is the "attached" USB cable, I would prefer it to be detachable, so it could be replaced if something happened to the original, but when I considered the fact that it is conveniently stored right on the unit for easy storage, transport, and protection, I decided to cross the "damage cable thing" bridge when I get to it, and move on. The second "Con" is that they don't include any software to actually use it other than Windows Media Player for playing music. So, I did my usual research and found "Express Burn" by NCH Software. It did a great job and very easy to use at an also unbeatable price...FREE! There may be others out there, and of course you could pay to get some premium features, but this program will copy files, create back-ups and copies of your music collection, as well as create bootable CD's to repair your Windows build if need be, without making an additional investment. To close this "novel" (which I almost never write reviews) I will just say I highly recommend this drive, and paired up with the free software you can't go wrong!

Just as described.

The new computers don't come with the CD option. I bought this to use when we need this option. It works great.