Good External DVD Drive?

[connierebel]

Now that laptops mostly don't come with DVD drives, you'd think that they'd make decent external DVD drives. But I've had more trouble with them recently than I can shake a stick at! (My laptop actually does have an internal one, but it doesn't work.) I had a Rioddas drive form Amazon that worked good for years, but finally wore out, plus the cord was too short for where I want it on my desk, so I bought an Asus one that had a longer cord, but that one takes up 2 USB ports! So I found a different one with a long cord on Amazon, and after using it a couple times, it no longer shows up as a DVD drive. They sent me a replacement, and that one had the same problem. So I bought another Rioddas drive, since the first one was good, but now the new one is giving me all sorts of trouble! Half the time, it doesn't read the disk on the first try, so I have to take it out and put it back in, and then sometimes it freezes up in the middle of the video, or randomly closes out. And these are commercial DVDs, too.
I know everybody nowadays is going to the "cloud," but it would take hundreds of hours to convert all my DVDs, and hundreds more to upload them to the cloud, or hundreds of dollars worth of storage. Plus it defeats the purpose of collecting my favorite shows! So does anybody have any recommendations for decent external DVD drives, preferably affordable?

[ERThree]

This is the external drive I use. It’s been sorta iffy with CDs, but I have gone through easily dozens of DVDs while using it and haven’t had a single issue: https://www.amazon.com/External-CD-D...=22EROONVKDLL5

[connierebel]

Originally Posted by ERThree

This is the external drive I use. It’s been sorta iffy with CDs, but I have gone through easily dozens of DVDs while using it and haven’t had a single issue: https://www.amazon.com/External-CD-D...=22EROONVKDLL5

Thank you. Is it iffy when playing CDs, or burning CDs? I don't play CDs very often, but I do burn them sometimes.

[ERThree]

It does fine with burning CDs, playing them tends to be hit-and-miss. Have not had a problem with DVDs at all.

[connierebel]

Awesome, thank you very much!