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Feeling just a bit sadistic, we subjected the drive to the most difficult possible scenario short of discovering its terminal velocity experimentally: An early USB 1.0 controller, Linux, and an idiot at /dev/tty0. These were provided by SuSE 9.1 (kernel 2.6), a Shuttle HOT597, and Yours Truly. Interestingly, we mostly got the drive working correctly as a data storage device, but we could not get audio data to stream from it or view audio tracks; even forcing a mount from the command line, the directory structure would return empty. Odd, but then again we only spent a couple hours at this (without the aid of Internet access), and it was a combination of circumstances the SCB-2408-D was likely never intended to encounter.

Doubtless the drive can be made to work fine under Linux (provided the distro’s USB/Firewire support is up to par). Rather, we were probably guilty of trying to “use Linux like Windows,” which – as someone once informed us – is entirely unacceptable. Fair enough, chalk this one up to a learning experience.

But nobody ever said that we learn very fast. So, before concluding the Linux experiment, we attempted a CD burn.

That almost worked, and we got just far enough into the burn process to create a coaster when K3B (a Nero-like graphical frontend for the CDrecord utility) reported a calibration error. At that point we did finally give up. Still, we had the basics running to some degree in spite of the outdated supporting hardware and knowledge deficit, which was encouraging. We expect the Linux experts out there will find no practical hindrance toward adding the SCB-2408 to their hardware collections.

Conclusions

ASUS has produced another excellent portable accessory in the SCB-2408-D. The drive was quiet and behaved flawlessly in our testing; and as any external drive should, it operated as transparently as though it were installed internally. Comparable models are available on the market with similar specifications, but most are USB-only and limited to Windows. Few (if any) offer Firewire interfacing and claim support for MacOS, while retaining a small form-factor. Anyone searching for a versatile external CD-RW/DVD drive should give this model a serious consideration.

MS Thoughts (I know that sounds a lot like Kyle Bennett but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery) :

I have test-driven and abused the SCB2408-D for about 6 months now just to see how reliable it is and there has not been a single glitch. Of course, we produced the obligatory coasters but those instances were mostly user-inflicted or else a matter of a bad source CD that generated read errors when we tried to copy it. Some may also argue that 24x is no longer the industry standard, in view of Mt. Rainier technology and 48x burn-speed this may be true but on the other hand, who cares if the burning takes 3 minutes or 5, unless we are looking at some industrial application that requires burning of a multitude of CDs and in that case, a different unit would be more appropriate anyway. Suffice it to say that this little portable burner is incredibly versatile, reliable and robust and highly recommended.

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