Question about UHD Blu-ray ripping workflow (LG/ASUS drives, firmware, NAS)

[katyperry]

Hello everyone,
I have a few technical questions regarding UHD Blu-ray (4K) ripping with MakeMKV and hope to get some advice from experienced users.
Optical drives:
Are LG or ASUS drives still the most reliable options for UHD ripping? Any specific models currently recommended?
Firmware:
Is it better to stay on an older friendly firmware or use newer firmware with LibreDrive support? Any known stability differences?
4K discs:
For large UHD MKV files, do you usually keep full disc rips or select only the main title + audio tracks?
Storage / NAS:
What NAS setup works well for long-term storage and smooth 4K playback (SMB/NFS, Plex, Jellyfin, etc.)?
MakeMKV has been very solid for me so far, especially with LibreDrive support, and I’d appreciate hearing about real-world setups from the community.
Thanks in advance.

[dcoke22]

Hello everyone,
I have a few technical questions regarding UHD Blu-ray (4K) ripping with MakeMKV and hope to get some advice from experienced users.
Optical drives:
Are LG or ASUS drives still the most reliable options for UHD ripping? Any specific models currently recommended?

Pioneer drives are held in the highest regard. They're hard to come by since Pioneer stopped manufacturing optical drives a while ago. Generally speaking, if it is a model that supports reading 4K UHDs from Pioneer, MakeMKV can use it to rip 4K UHDs.

Firmware:
Is it better to stay on an older friendly firmware or use newer firmware with LibreDrive support? Any known stability differences?

For Pioneer drives, don't change the firmware unless you know what and why you're doing it. For LG based drives, the Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide has a list of recommended firmware.

4K discs:
For large UHD MKV files, do you usually keep full disc rips or select only the main title + audio tracks?

For all of my rips I only keep the .mkv of the rip with the audio and subtitle tracks I'm interested in. I also generally rip 'DVD Extras' into their own .mkv files as well. There's no right answer though. If keeping a decrypted disc backup is your preference, go for it.

Storage / NAS:
What NAS setup works well for long-term storage and smooth 4K playback (SMB/NFS, Plex, Jellyfin, etc.)?
MakeMKV has been very solid for me so far, especially with LibreDrive support, and I’d appreciate hearing about real-world setups from the community.
Thanks in advance.

I use a NAS that uses the ZFS file system for a bunch of nerdy technical reasons. Honestly, storing your data on any NAS with some kind of redundancy so that you're not going to lose it all with one bad hard drive will put you miles ahead of most. Make sure that NAS is on a battery backup and setup to shutdown gracefully in case of a power outage. And, perhaps most importantly, redundancy is not a backup. A backup of some kind might really save you a lot of work some day in the future. None of this is sexy or fun, but if someone steals your NAS or your house burns down or floods or is damaged in a tornado… having a backup will be super handy.

However you want to play it back is fine too. I run a Plex server. My TV has an AppleTV 4K box in front of it that runs the Plex app and all my other streaming services. But Jellyfin or whatever is also fine. Whatever your preference is so that it works for you and your family is what you should aim for. And it is something that will require a constant but very low level of care and feeding. So you should like or at least not hate whatever playback system you're managing.

[Woodstock]

Honestly, storing your data on any NAS with some kind of redundancy so that you're not going to lose it all with one bad hard drive will put you miles ahead of most.

And, depending on your paranoia level, having off-site backup can be important. Having TWO servers stolen or involved in a fire at once doesn't do your backups much good.

[kaysee]

It is best to have a variety of brands and models. A reliable desktop Pioneer drive that I have had for more than a year, and a reliable desktop LG drive that I have had for nearly 10 years, have been able to read discs without errors that the other drive could not read or (sometimes) even mount. So the Pioneer sometimes can copy a blu-ray without errors which the LG will read with errors. But the LG sometimes can mount and copy a disc without errors (blu-ray or UHD) that the Pioneer cannot even mount.