I purchased this external drive for a family member who still relies on being able to read and write to optical media. The device would have been used, but not heavily. A few months after purchase, the female plug-end on the device that the USB cable plugs in to became loose and eventually the device would no longer power up. Not sure if other entry-level external optical drives are built better than this, but buying this might be a bit like a roll of the dice.

Well it's an optical drive. Not many people are needing these nowadays. My son was building a new PC and he still wanted an optical drive. There aren't many cases with 5.25" drive bays any more. At the time of ordering, MEMX had very few cases in stock with these drive bays. I couldn't talk my son out of an optical drive as he has a few older games on DVD. He was a little reluctant to consider and external drive at first, but once he seen what he had to pick from in terms of cases, he changed his mind. The drive does what we expect it to do. Since it's not mounted inside the case it won't have a bunch of dust pushed into it from the case fans which causes the drive to prematurely die due to dust that builds up on the laser.

Only USB 2.0, so two weaknesses from this: -Only 8X read speeds which is a third of the speed of an internal DVD drive -USB 2.0 only provides a maximum current of 500mA or half an amp. This means the provided cable has two USB plugs to provide enough current to run the drive. If you plug it into a USB 3.0 port, you don't have to use the second power only connector, just looks ugly. The provided cable is also quite short. Most people are going to sit this drive on top of their cases while using it so the length won't be an issue. This is fine if your case is flat on top, but my son's case isn't, so it makes it difficult to use this drive. This could have been mitigated if the cable had been a foot longer so the drive could be placed on the desk.

So for those people that still need or want an optical drive, but you either can't find or don't want a case with a 5.25" drive bay, then an external drive is the only way to go. This would have been a better drive if it were USB 3.0, but MEMX didn't have one at the time of purchase.