Apparently, if you use an extension, it will cause the disc to become stuck inside the unit. This was mentioned specifically on one coming from China.
Because my computer has 3.0 USB hubs, I wanted to buy a drive to match, but the last one I bought had a cable that was only about 8" long making it necessary to set the unit on top of my CPU where, of course, it fell off. Very awkward to use, but I suppose they don’t give you a longer cable to preserve the sound quality, should you want to rip cd’s which is what I would use it for.
So now, I’m worried that other drives may have the same issue (disc getting stuck).
Can anyone lend his/her expertise to my question? I would like to avoid buying from China, if that’s possible.
Thank You
I’ve used my external dvd drive with a 10ft cable, didn’t seem to have any issue. I don’t use the dvd often, just for some old documents that people can’t be hassle to upload to the network drives, so I can’t attest to sustain speeds.
That makes no sense. Who says this? What is the make/model? That should not even be possible. Same with the part about using a longer cable decreases the sound quality. It does not. Think about a DvD player connected to an HD TV and a 7.1 surround sound system and its quality running through a 4-8ft cord.
A USB 3 connection can transfer upwards of 640MB per second…a 1 sided CD holds like 720mb…a 1 sided DvD is 4.7GB so a USB 3 could in perfect instances transfer an entire DvD of data in less than 10 seconds and thus there would be a grand total of 0.0% loss in quality just because the cord is longer.
Anyway, post the make/model of the drive and lets go from there.
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It came from Amazon, I will find the specific ad and link you to it, Vlad. Thank you for the response, and I agree.
ETA: It’s note #4 near the end of the product description.
Eww, Guamar are known for cheap products. It is very possible that it will not work with a different cable because their connection ports are subpar. That unit has a 3.0 thunderbolt connection port, if you happen to have another device using one I would connect it to this unit and see if it works.
It will NOT cause the disc to become stuck so there is no harm in it. if it does work I would then order another cable that you know is compatible with the device you took the cable from, instead of trying to find another one for the DvD drive.
As for its Note #4…its warning that if you connect it to a USB hub it may not be recognized which can happen with any device connected to a hub and then is warning not to connect it to an extension CORD. IE: power cord. Not using a longer USB cable. 
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Thank you, sir for your time and expertise. I had planned to pay around $40-50 bucks, but I wanted the 3.0 because of the speed. I have not yet ordered it, but I’m one of those folks who look at the “1’s” in reviews just to see the complaints. And ja, Amazon has a lot of those for a myriad of reasons.
Thanks again, Vlad
NP, glad you didnt buy it yet, there are many other superior choices out there.
What about using a higher-quality external USB adapter for SATA and hard drives, and then a internal SATA optical drive to connect to it?
It likely won’t be as convenient and neatly-packaged, but the USB-to-SATA part will likely be premium for HDDs and thus handle optical drives no problem, and you can use it for HDDs when you aren’t using an optical drive.
I have a $10 USB3 to SATA adapter from eBay bought recently that I’ve used for SSDs and a 10TB NAS drive, and still have a $20 DVD-RW drive I bought years ago and probably used once 
Sip the conversion entirely. I run two BD-RW drives using powered eSATA - they behave, for all intents and purposes, as if they were internal drives. Without the USB intermediate there’s no issues of controllers going to sleep when they shouldn’t (something my USB harddrives experience), they don’t require an external power supply, and it removes a potential failure point (USB-to-SATA interfaces tend to be made to a price, not a standard).
Both of these drives are far better behaved, faster, quieter, and significantly more reliable than my two USB BD-RW drives (one is a native USB Pioneer, the other is a laptop LG with a USB-to-SATA adapter - and this one always gives me grief).
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Mine external disk drive is an LG I think. I bought it at Target years ago. I’ve used like a 6ft cable on it and it’s worked fine. I’ve only had to really pull it out when I do livestreams of movies for guildies before. Or when I’ve had to download Guild Wars 2 from the original disk set.