That little Lenovo Q150 doesn’t include an optical drive and, mostly, I don’t need one, but sometimes it’s handy to boot from a CD. I picked up a used DVD burner that also fits my Dell E1405 laptop (should I need a spare) and a tiny USB laptop drive case from the usual eBay sources for a grand total of $17 delivered.
The drive had a mounting bracket on the back that obviously had to come off, because the bracket screws snuggled right in among the USB adapter electronics:
In fact, that flat tab with a hole would have clunked up against the back of the case and prevented it from sliding all the way in, but the screws also foiled Plan B: flip the bracket around so the tab goes under the drive where it couldn’t get lost if I needed it again.
So now the bracket & screws live in a little bag in the Box o’ USB Stuff.
The DVD drive works fine with just a single USB cable, although the case came with a power-only USB cable, so the latter also lives in the bag with the bracket. Maybe I’ll need it in the unlikely event I actually burn a DVD in that drive?
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
4 responses to “External USB Case vs OEM DVD Drive Mounting Bracket”
“I don’t need one, but sometimes it’s handy to boot from a CD.”
Big Brother watching us.
“UEFI secure booting”
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/5552.html
Yup, that’ll be interesting to watch. Some day, maybe, I’ll be forced to give up playing with PCs, just like everybody else.
Of course, by then the notion of a “personal” computer will be long gone: you’ll just own a gadget that lets you run a defined set of programs, nothing more, maybe a bit less.
One wonders how anyone would ever learn to program in such an environment.
[…] it turns out that the DVD drive I stuffed into that case really does require a whole bunch of current. I tried playing a DVD and got erratic results, […]