need suggestion for external CD ripping drive

I've never used an external CD drive, but I always had good luck with LiteOn internal drives. From what I recall, Plextor used to be the "bee's knees" of internal drives. I assume their external drives are of sufficient quality as well. Look at Newegg.com and see what the reviews say.

FYI, I think the max read speed on most externals is 24x

thanks, I'm seeing a lot of external DVD writer drives, but no CD/ROM drives, I guess that is a sign of the times. I like the Seagate brand, I use one of their external hard drives to hold all my rips...

You're not likely to find a new CD/ROM-only ripper/burner but as far as I know all DVD drives will also handle CDs.

I have an external DVD drive from Other World Computing with a Pioneer mechanism that's been completely reliable ripping and burning hundreds of CDs and is very heavily built. It has both USB 2.0 and Firewire ports.

The only downside is that the fan is noisy during the burning or ripping process but since I'm using it almost always just during the time I'm transferring music that's not a big concern. It also comes in handy for software installations on a laptop with a flaky optical drive.

I do agree with the Seagate recommendation, I've bought dozens of their products at work and never had a problem.

Lacie external firewire drive - the best way to go.