Hi everyone,

In this post, I’ll be tearing down the YOTUO External USB DVD-ROM Drive to show the components inside the DVD enclosure.

DVD Enclosure Teardown

The DVD enclosure is similar to other DVD units that can be purchased out there. The design is usually varied.

To open this enclosure, we need to remove some screws on the back:

We then slide the case and the drive will be revealed:

We can see that the cable that connects to the Printed Circuit Board uses a Mini USB connector:

Here I have taken the DVD drive out of the enclosure:

It turns out that below this sticker, there is another one that reveals the actual drive model:

The drive used in the YOTUO External DVD-ROM Drive is an HP-branded Lite-On DS-8D3SH. Lite-On drives are generally of good quality.

Here is the front of the DVD drive:

And the back of the drive:

Here is the DVD drive with its tray open:

Now, let’s take a look at the Printed Circuit Board of the enclosure:

After disconnecting the board from the USB cable, here is the SATA side of it:

On the back, we see the USB port as well as the controller bridge IC:

The USB to SATA controller chip used in this board is an INITIO INIC-1618N. These INITIO chips are very good at doing the USB to SATA job. It’s good to see the board using a high quality chip:

Conclusion

The YOTUO External DVD-ROM drive I got has a high quality Lite-On DS-8D3SH DVD-ROM drive. It also uses a high quality INITIO chip that allows the use of SATA DVD drives as USB drives. This chip is USB 2.0.

The YOTUO drive cable seems to indicate it is USB 3.0, but actually runs at USB 2.0 speeds. This is due to the Mini USB cable as well as the INITIO chip being only capable of up to USB 2.0 speeds.

Overall, for a USB DVD drive, USB 2.0 is enough as these drives are limited at up to 8x speeds. If you don’t mind CD or DVD burning, this DVD-ROM drive will be great for you.

You can buy this drive on Amazon on the following link:

• YOTUO External USB DVD-ROM Drive

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