My eighteen month old Lenovo laptop died. It was plugged in and sitting on the coffee table when Momma's little lapdog came charging through and got tangled up with the cord and pulled the computer off onto a thick area rug. I hoped it would survive the crash. in vain.

So now I am on a new Asus "Tuf Gaming" model built to "Military shock protection standards". Yeah. it is good ad copy. But there is no HDD to be susceptible to shock. "So, I got that going for me." It has 256 Mb SSD.

Anyway the new laptop has no optical drive and I can not load any of my software from CD or DVD. (including Sierra Infinity 7 and RCBS Load 2.8) I have been looking at USB external ODs. Is there anything a person needs to know before punching the buy button at Newegg or Amazon?

No advice here, but I'm glad to know they do make those.

Edit: I just had the thought to make sure the OD and your laptop have the same or at least compatible USB versions. 2.0, 3.0 or the newer C (which has a whole different plug).

I've used several different cheap ones over the years, all worked.

256mb ssd? You wont be installing anything on a drive that small. I am assuming you Gb

Keep a backup, ssds do go bad, especially the cheap ones, they overheat. 9 out of 10 times you can recover something from a bad hdd, but you will be out of luck with a ssd. They sure are fast though.

You have a network with another computer that has a DVD drive? You could export the drive and import it to your laptop.

Yes, you are correct. it is 256 gig.

Conrad, yes I have a desktop with a network cable into the router which provides Wi Fi to this laptop, phones, and to the TV. I have no experience with trying to network them. The external USB OD comes as low as $30. But I am looking at the $100 versions with Blu Ray capability and DVD writer and we will also use it to play Blu Ray discs on the TV. My camera and printer are also WiFi capable, but not connected. I am guessing it will be easier to buy an external drive than to learn how to setup and maintain a network.

I do not worry about backup of the laptop. It is just a toy. Anything which bears saving is on an HDD on the desktop, with a second backup HDD in the system, and OS on a 512 Gig Samsung SSD. And occasionally I plug in an old HDD which I u[date with all the new pictures of the G kids and put it back into the kids' gunsafe. Those pics are the only thing of any importance on any of my computers.

Careful runing the computer to the TV to play blu ray. I've had cable issues going HDMI to the TV, it didn't allow sending teh signal fast enough and the experience sucked.

The TV has USB ports. I intended to just plug the OD into the TV when I was not using it for the computer.

Comments?

Newegg.com is a pretty good place to get an external optical drive. Just make sure you get on that matches your USB type on the new laptop.

Phil

I got the drive ordered. Asus16X blu ray write. USB 2 and USB 3. The laptop has 2 USB 3 ports and 1 USB 2 port.

The TV was top of the line 58 inch Samsung last year. So the USB ports there should be at least USB 2.