Issue with two drives

[iakovos]

Hello everyone,

First of all I just wanted to say thanks to Mike for his work on makeMKV. It is a great product and I purchased a license to support him and the community around makeMKV.

With that said I recently encountered an issue when I added a second drive on my machine. Both drives are identical but obviously under different drive letters in windows 10:

Manufacturer: PIONEER
Product: BD-RW BDR-209M
Revision: 1.50 (this is latest, they were 1.34 before this)

I have gone through: Preferences > IO > Ask for single drive mode (ticked)

Restarted the application, restarted the machine multiple times but regardless of how many times I try to go through this process or what I try I never get asked which drive I want to use on launch of the application and as a result I am unable to use both drives.

I can confirm that when I insert a disk on the second drive this is picked up perfectly fine by the OS and I can see and access both drives as expected.

Am I missing something? Any help would be appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

[Grauhaar]

What did you see if you navigate to "File->Open disc". Are both drives in the list or only one of them? The single drive mode works only if two or more drives are detected.

[iakovos]

What did you see if you navigate to "File->Open disc". Are both drives in the list or only one of them? The single drive mode works only if two or more drives are detected.

Only one drive seems to be listed. I have just reinstalled the software but made no difference. I have reset (powered off, removed powered, drained charge and restarted) the PC

Also the drive is detected by windows as an optical drive (both show identical icons) and I even can play DVDs from the undetected drive in windows using VLC.

I compared the two drives and both are consistent in options, permissions etc.

It makes no difference if I run makeMKV as administrator or not.

Any thoughts welcome

[iakovos]

If this helps to rule a few things out I can confirm that both drives are detected properly as optical drives by the OS:

C:\Users\username>wmic cdrom where mediatype!='unknown' get /format:list


Availability=3
Capabilities={3,4,7}
CapabilityDescriptions={"Random Access"," Supports writing"," Supports Removable Media"}
Caption=PIONEER BD-RW BDR-209M
CompressionMethod=Unknown
ConfigManagerErrorCode=0
ConfigManagerUserConfig=FALSE
CreationClassName=Win32_CDROMDrive
DefaultBlockSize=
Description=CD-ROM Drive
DeviceID=SCSI\CDROM&VEN_PIONEER&PROD_BD-RW___BDR-209M\4&1F28D676&0&020000
Drive=E:
DriveIntegrity=
ErrorCleared=
ErrorDescription=
ErrorMethodology=
FileSystemFlags=
FileSystemFlagsEx=21496327
Id=E:
InstallDate=
LastErrorCode=
Manufacturer=(Standard CD-ROM drives)
MaxBlockSize=
MaximumComponentLength=254
MaxMediaSize=
MediaLoaded=TRUE
MediaType=DVD Writer
MfrAssignedRevisionLevel=1.50
MinBlockSize=
Name=PIONEER BD-RW BDR-209M
NeedsCleaning=
NumberOfMediaSupported=
PNPDeviceID=SCSI\CDROM&VEN_PIONEER&PROD_BD-RW___BDR-209M\4&1F28D676&0&020000
PowerManagementCapabilities=
PowerManagementSupported=
RevisionLevel=
SCSIBus=2
SCSILogicalUnit=0
SCSIPort=0
SCSITargetId=0
SerialNumber=
Size=4518340608
Status=OK
StatusInfo=
SystemCreationClassName=Win32_ComputerSystem
SystemName=XXXXXXXX
TransferRate=-1
VolumeName=SUPERNATURAL_SEASON_6_DISC_3
VolumeSerialNumber=F13F22AA


Availability=3
Capabilities={3,4,7}
CapabilityDescriptions={"Random Access"," Supports writing"," Supports Removable Media"}
Caption=PIONEER BD-RW BDR-209M
CompressionMethod=Unknown
ConfigManagerErrorCode=0
ConfigManagerUserConfig=FALSE
CreationClassName=Win32_CDROMDrive
DefaultBlockSize=
Description=CD-ROM Drive
DeviceID=SCSI\CDROM&VEN_PIONEER&PROD_BD-RW___BDR-209M\5&161E0D8A&0&030000
Drive=F:
DriveIntegrity=
ErrorCleared=
ErrorDescription=
ErrorMethodology=
FileSystemFlags=
FileSystemFlagsEx=21496327
Id=F:
InstallDate=
LastErrorCode=
Manufacturer=(Standard CD-ROM drives)
MaxBlockSize=
MaximumComponentLength=254
MaxMediaSize=
MediaLoaded=TRUE
MediaType=DVD Writer
MfrAssignedRevisionLevel=1.50
MinBlockSize=
Name=PIONEER BD-RW BDR-209M
NeedsCleaning=
NumberOfMediaSupported=
PNPDeviceID=SCSI\CDROM&VEN_PIONEER&PROD_BD-RW___BDR-209M\5&161E0D8A&0&030000
PowerManagementCapabilities=
PowerManagementSupported=
RevisionLevel=
SCSIBus=3
SCSILogicalUnit=0
SCSIPort=1
SCSITargetId=0
SerialNumber=
Size=6197264384
Status=OK
StatusInfo=
SystemCreationClassName=Win32_ComputerSystem
SystemName=XXXXXXXX
TransferRate=-1
VolumeName=SUPERNATURAL_SEASON_6_DISC_4
VolumeSerialNumber=83BC3C6

[rivey]

What happens if you uncheck the single drive option? Do you then see both drives or still just one. By the way, when you uncheck that box, you will need to close the program and restart. I just tried checking the single drive box on my system and then it does ask which drive I want. When it is unchecked, I am able to choose the drive I want since I have one drive that is UHD friendly and one that is not but will work for other discs.

[Woodstock]

If you have two disks in the drives, THEN start MakeMKV, does it ask to use single-drive mode?

Given that the drives are identical, Windows MAY be treating them as the same drive, until you put a disk in to differentiate them. This is NOT supposed to happen, but Windows can give some very weird behaviors!

[iakovos]

What happens if you uncheck the single drive option? Do you then see both drives or still just one. By the way, when you uncheck that box, you will need to close the program and restart. I just tried checking the single drive box on my system and then it does ask which drive I want. When it is unchecked, I am able to choose the drive I want since I have one drive that is UHD friendly and one that is not but will work for other discs.

Thank you for your reply! The behaviour is the same whether the tickbox is checked or not. It only sees the first drive. I have restarted the program (also the entire machine) and even reinstalled MakeMKV a few times completely with no different results.

I am not presented with a choice on which drive to use regardless of if there is a disk in none, one or both drives (although windows recognise and treat everything as they should).

[iakovos]

If you have two disks in the drives, THEN start MakeMKV, does it ask to use single-drive mode?

Given that the drives are identical, Windows MAY be treating them as the same drive, until you put a disk in to differentiate them. This is NOT supposed to happen, but Windows can give some very weird behaviors!

Thank you for your reply! I definitely have tried this with no disks in, disks in one of the drives (tried both) and also with disks in both with restarting the MakeMKV and the entire Machine in between.

In the copy/paste I provided above from the windows CLI, you can see that each drive has a different letter and a different disk in. Also the differences in the BUS can be seen which suggest this is not an obvious "Windows getting confused" issue. I can confirm that other programs can access the drives fine, for example I can play the DVDs via VLC just fine.

Please note that I am not saying it is not windows, just that it seems unlikely with what I am seeing so far.

[rivey]

What version of MakeMKV are you using? If you are using V1.12.3, you might try removing it and installing v1.12.2. I doubt that this is the problem, but some people have reported a few issues with the new version. Might be worth a shot.

[iakovos]

What version of MakeMKV are you using? If you are using V1.12.3, you might try removing it and installing v1.12.2. I doubt that this is the problem, but some people have reported a few issues with the new version. Might be worth a shot.

I was using 1.12.3 but just uninstalled and tried 1.12.2 as suggested. Identical results, same issue persists.

[Grauhaar]

Threre is an issue if you are using Windows Defender blocking optical devices. Please check http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic ... der#p62912

[iakovos]

Threre is an issue if you are using Windows Defender blocking optical devices. Please check http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic ... der#p62912

Many thanks for this - good spot. Unfortunately this did nothing in my case as the folder protection was off.

I even tried switching it on and explicitly allowing MakeMKV but again this made no difference. Only the first drive detected again.

[iakovos]

EDIT - Removed accidental double post

[xr200]

I have 2 identical drives (including same firmware) (ASUS, not Pioneer). One of them is
mounted in my desktop, connected with a SATA cable to the motherboard. The other is in an
external case and connected to the desktop with a USB cable.

I have no problems running makemkv simultaneously on both drives: it doesn't matter
if a disc is loaded in either drive or not, it always works. I've never tried having both
drives connected directly to the motherboard.

How are your drives connected? If they are connected the same way, if you
have spare cables/hardware stuck in a drawer somewhere, try connected one of the drives with a different
type of cable, or maybe even to a different port (eg, an eSATA port instead of a SATA port on your motherboard)
and see what happens. Maybe that would help figure out what's not working properly for you.

Good Luck.

[iakovos]

I have 2 identical drives (including same firmware) (ASUS, not Pioneer). One of them is
mounted in my desktop, connected with a SATA cable to the motherboard. The other is in an
external case and connected to the desktop with a USB cable.

I have no problems running makemkv simultaneously on both drives: it doesn't matter
if a disc is loaded in either drive or not, it always works. I've never tried having both
drives connected directly to the motherboard.

How are your drives connected? If they are connected the same way, if you
have spare cables/hardware stuck in a drawer somewhere, try connected one of the drives with a different
type of cable, or maybe even to a different port (eg, an eSATA port instead of a SATA port on your motherboard)
and see what happens. Maybe that would help figure out what's not working properly for you.

Good Luck.

Thanks for your suggestion.

I can confirm that the drives are both connected on the SATA Bus, are recognised differently and have both different drive letters (both as optical drives) as well as show up under different Bus Channels/IDs.

This can also be seen in the wmic output pasted a few posts above.

Unfortunately I cannot test using the second drive in a completely different type of bus as I do not have the enclosure.

I would love to hear from other people with dual/multiple identical internal drive setups and see if they have had similar issues. If anyone knows how we can simulate the operations MakeMKV performs when starts to see what Windows actually returns please let me know.

Many thanks again for your suggestion!