Pioneer BDR-XD05 slow read on Mac solution

[gew95001]

I have a Pioneer BDR-XD05B that I've been using successfully for about a year. Tonight I decided to do some ripping and suddenly found that I could read no faster than 2.0X - far slower than before. The disc rotation speed slowed down very quickly after Makemkv started the read, and was suspiciously constant at the slower speed. After doing some research I found no solutions, other than the drive might be failing (which didn't seem to be the case looking at the debug log). I tried several discs (some of which I'd ripped before), but never exceeded 2.0X.

I recently upgraded my mac to Sierra, and I wondered if that had something to do with it. Looking at the specs of the drive I found that it has an Auto Quiet mode. This hasn't caused any issues before, but I when I saw it could be disabled I decided to see what that would do.

I found that other versions (like the BDR-XD05S) had a utility for the mac, but this drive did not. I did try to use the XD05S utility, but it did not detect the drive. I booted an old XP SP3 laptop and downloaded the utility, as well as the 3.01 firmware update. I installed the firmware (which took about 3 minutes) and then started the utility. The utility detected the drive and showed that the Quiet mode was set to "Quiet". This should start the drive speed slow, but allow it to speed up when needed. I decided to switch it to "Performance Mode", saved the settings to the drive, and moved the drive back to my mac.

HUGE difference. I am now reading a blu-ray at 5.9X (sometimes hitting 6.0X). I have no proof, but I suspect an upgrade on the mac caused the issue.

Hope this helps some of you out there with slow read speeds on the mac.

[MiraSun]

Hey, I registered just to say thank you for this information. I was always disappointed that I couldn't get the full advertised 6x read speed from my BDR-XD05S, even after updating my drive's firmware. I am running MacOS Sierra and I tried to use Pioneer's Mac drive utility a number of times without any success having the software detect the drive (it really is their fault). I then tried it on a bootcamp Windows 7 install, and it didn't work there either - identical to my MacOS side, it couldn't see the drive. Then I tried it on a family member's Windows 10 via Parallels install, and it worked! I just ran a 21.7GB Blu-Ray title and it finished in just over 20 minutes running at 5.6x! That used to take a little over an hour, so I am very pleased. Pioneer hides their downloads page, or at least thats how it seems to me when I went looking for the newest download via google search. For those looking for the source, here's the link:

http://pioneer.jp/device_e/product-e/ib ... 01r_e.html

Make sure you are downloading the Utility for the correct model, and you should be good to go as long as you have a Windows install to update from. Good thing this drive is so portable, people can take it to a friend's Windows install quite easily.

Thanks gew95001!

[Krawk]

It is very common to have to visit the Japan site to get a firmware update newer than what you have installed as well as have to run the Windows utility to switch a drive to performance mode. Is the nature of the beast.

[gew95001]

Glad I could help out! That being said, I'm glad you posted the below - knowing it's possible to do it in Parallels is excellent news. And thanks for the link!

Glenn

Hey, I registered just to say thank you for this information. I was always disappointed that I couldn't get the full advertised 6x read speed from my BDR-XD05S, even after updating my drive's firmware. I am running MacOS Sierra and I tried to use Pioneer's Mac drive utility a number of times without any success having the software detect the drive (it really is their fault). I then tried it on a bootcamp Windows 7 install, and it didn't work there either - identical to my MacOS side, it couldn't see the drive. Then I tried it on a family member's Windows 10 via Parallels install, and it worked! I just ran a 21.7GB Blu-Ray title and it finished in just over 20 minutes running at 5.6x! That used to take a little over an hour, so I am very pleased. Pioneer hides their downloads page, or at least thats how it seems to me when I went looking for the newest download via google search. For those looking for the source, here's the link:

http://pioneer.jp/device_e/product-e/ib ... 01r_e.html

Make sure you are downloading the Utility for the correct model, and you should be good to go as long as you have a Windows install to update from. Good thing this drive is so portable, people can take it to a friend's Windows install quite easily.

Thanks gew95001!

[MagmaiKH]

Thanks for this.
I picked up a BDR-XD05 and it was limiting itself to 2.0 M/s because of the quiet mode.
I'm running Linux but you can plug the drive into a Windows PC, run the utility, and tell it to store the setting on the drive.
22 M/s now!

[Mammoth]

It's several years later, but I'd like to add to the discussion. I had two Pioneer BDR-XD05 drives that would get about halfway through the rip process on my Mac (22 gigs or so) and then hit a number of posix and scsi errors. And then fail with 0 files saved.

So I tried to do the partial backup and then drag copy trick I read about in another forum post. But I discovered that the copy would fail partway through (at 14 gigs on one disc, other discs had the same issue at similar points of the copy).

So, I tried the rip again, and then when MakeMKV started having errors, I attempted to access the disk in the Finder. And it had trouble accession and reading folders on the disc. So the issue was not with MakeMKV—it was with drive access.

I have Big Sur, so the DASPI kernel extension wasn't an option for me. But then I discovered this thread and used Parallels to grab the utility. I set the drive to performance mode with Standard error reading option. Problem solved. I get up to 4X or so access, but I don't get the failures any more.

I also updated the one drive to firmware 3.10, which is nearly impossible to find. I found it on a dicey-looking website, but it worked. Here's the link, but don't trust it ( https://www.touslesdrivers.com/index.ph ... _langue=en )

[gew95001]

Hey - that’s great news, and another good piece of information to have for other people who might have the same issue.