Which to buy? Newbie help.

[mechasnags]

Hi All,

Been confusing myself by reading too much information and frying my remaining brain cells!
Looking to get an external BD drive for ripping some 4K content, as well as Regular BD/DVD & a load CD's

I have seen the following -

Verbatim Blu-Ray DVD-Drive 43888 - Markets itself as 4k, so would this need flashing?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07MTP9VKX/ ... _lig_dp_it


The below 2 ASUS drives, neeither listed at 4K what are chances either could be flashed?
ASUS TurboDrive - BW-16D1X-U - https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-tu ... ort-usb-32
ASUS BW-16D1H-U_PRO - https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-tu ... pportusb30

or internal drive and add case to it -
Pioneer BDR-S12XJ 212UBK - Again marketed as 4K so would it need flashing?

Any thoughts on best option to go for?
Slightly concerned about the longevity of the verbatim drive if ripping a lot of media on it.

Thanks for any advise / pointers in advance.

[yauumm]

Hi,

at least in my case (bought about a year ago) the Verbatim one is just an internal Pioneer drive with a case and can rip perfectly without flashing. But Verbatim may decide to use other drives or drive revisions in newer models, so there is no guarantee.

[mechasnags]

Thanks, tempted to give it a try.

How have you found it in general, got about 1000 discs to rip, recon it would be up to the task?

[dcoke22]

A new Verbatim 43888 will almost assuredly come with an LG BU40N inside. You'll be able to flash it yourself to enable LibreDrive by following the Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide. It is a reasonable drive to start with although it is power hungry, so it needs to be plugged into a properly powerful USB port.

Generally speaking, of new drives available today at retailers, they all have some kind of LG based drive inside them, regardless of the branding. While some enclosures might be fancier than others, the actual internal drives are similar, especially in the full sized desktop drives.
Pioneer stopped manufacturing optical drives a little while ago. They used to make their own internals and are considered much better than the LG based stuff, but they're hard to find now and there's a bunch of caveats about firmware versions. Asmcom, when their shop opens again, will probably still have some Pioneers for sale in Europe (briefly until they're sold out).

If you rip enough discs, you'll eventually want a second drive, preferably a Pioneer if you can find one (probably not one from China). I have several different drives. When I come across a disc that won't rip in my standard drive it almost always rips in a different drive. Not always, but often. You'll sometimes see people in the forum banging their heads against a wall trying to get a disc to rip and their drive just won't do it. Some people resort to extreme cleaning methods and that sometimes works. But you'll find people with multiple different drives often tell the same story; most discs worked in their main drive and most of those that didn't worked in their other drive. Of the few discs left, replacement discs worked.

[yauumm]

My first Verbatim was a non-UHD model and ripped several 100 discs. I bought the UHD model just for my 4K discs but started to use it for all new discs after my first drive began to break (worn out motor/bearing). The drive does its job but I wouldn't expect any regular consumer drive to survive ripping 1000 disc or more. You may need a replacement drive somewhere on your journey. Especially if you rip many discs in a short amount of time with the same drive.

Many years ago I ripped about 700 music CDs (with a process that read every disc four times, so 2800 disc reads in total). Had to replace the CD ROM drive three times during this process.

[uzless]

A new Verbatim 43888 will almost assuredly come with an LG BU40N inside. You'll be able to flash it yourself to enable LibreDrive by following the Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide. It is a reasonable drive to start with although it is power hungry, so it needs to be plugged into a properly powerful USB port.

Generally speaking, of new drives available today at retailers, they all have some kind of LG based drive inside them, regardless of the branding. While some enclosures might be fancier than others, the actual internal drives are similar, especially in the full sized desktop drives.
Pioneer stopped manufacturing optical drives a little while ago. They used to make their own internals and are considered much better than the LG based stuff, but they're hard to find now and there's a bunch of caveats about firmware versions. Asmcom, when their shop opens again, will probably still have some Pioneers for sale in Europe (briefly until they're sold out).

If you rip enough discs, you'll eventually want a second drive, preferably a Pioneer if you can find one (probably not one from China). I have several different drives. When I come across a disc that won't rip in my standard drive it almost always rips in a different drive. Not always, but often. You'll sometimes see people in the forum banging their heads against a wall trying to get a disc to rip and their drive just won't do it. Some people resort to extreme cleaning methods and that sometimes works. But you'll find people with multiple different drives often tell the same story; most discs worked in their main drive and most of those that didn't worked in their other drive. Of the few discs left, replacement discs worked.

good stuff

[mechasnags]

Thanks for the assistance, did decide to go with a pioneer drive in the end.