Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

I have an external usb dvd drive and an internal blu-ray drive. I use both at the same time for ripping movies to My Book 3TB external hard drive. I've noticed that the external dvd drive is considerably slower than the blu-ray drive. Any idea if the cause is because the dvd drive is usb connection instead of internal drive? If I replaced it with an internal dvd drive do you think it would be faster? I don't know the R/W rates of the two drives.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by prixat

Dani AI

Generated

Following ’s setup and ’s USB observation, below is a concise diagnostic checklist and practical fixes to pinpoint why the external DVD rips slower than the internal Blu‑ray.

Three places to check: the optical read speed (drive + disc), the USB bridge/bus and its real throughput, and the destination disk write performance (and whether two concurrent rips are causing head contention). Also watch CPU load if the ripping software is decrypting or transcoding on the fly.

  1. Quick isolation tests
  • Time a single large file copy from the PC to the My Book (use Explorer or a timed copy). That gives the real write speed of the external HDD.
  • Create an image (ISO) from a DVD in the external drive and write it to an internal HDD; note MB/s reported by the ripper.
  • Repeat the DVD->MyBook test but stop the Blu‑ray activity so only one rip/write runs. Compare results.
  1. What the numbers tell you
  • If DVD->internal is fast but DVD->MyBook is slow, the My Book USB path (or shared USB controller) is the limiter.
  • If DVD->internal is slow, the external DVD drive itself (or the disc quality) is the limiter.
  • If CPU is pegged during ripping, the software/decoding step can bottleneck throughput.
  1. Practical fixes
  • Rip one disc at a time, or rip to an internal SATA drive and copy to the My Book afterward.
  • Use native USB ports (avoid hubs), ensure the My Book is on a USB3 port if available, and update chipset/USB drivers.
  • For sustained multi‑disc ripping, an internal DVD drive (or a USB3 enclosure with a modern bridge chip) plus internal target storage will give the most consistent throughput.

Note: ’s legal point is separate from these technical steps; this advice only addresses performance.

Recommended Answers

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Member Avatar for Rik_

Ripping movies is illegal in most countries!

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

It is perfectly legle in USA IF I do not attempt to transfer the copies anywhere else, such as to another computer or over the internet. I've already looked up the laws on that one. I have the right to make one copy for myself.

Edited by Ancient Dragon
Member Avatar for prixat

I think you're right, USB is the bottleneck.
What flavour of USB do you have?

Even USB3 still has the extra overhead of SATA/USB conversion that an internal drive doesn't have.

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

The drive is USB 2

Member Avatar for prixat

Technically speaking, thats only slightly faster than a snail going uphill!

You might get a tiny bit more performance if you rip to an internal HDD and copy it to My Book afterwards, but I wouldn't expect much from a USB2 device.

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