Harry Potter UHD Set Disc 6 (Half Blood Prince) Read Failure

[theemanofsteele]

I purchased a new LG WH16NS40 drive and flashed it to 1.02MK.
For some reason, disc #6 (Half Blood Prince) of the Harry Potter UHD Box set, won't even read. On Windows the drive makes the lovely grinding seek noise we all love. I've tried cleaning the disc (microfiber cloth, etc), restarting many times, uninstalling drivers/reinstall, reflashing to stock 1.02 and back to 1.02MK. Back to 1.05 and back down to 1.02/MK. Every once in a while I can get it to read enough where Windows recognizes there is a disc in the drive and displays the title. As soon as I open Explorer to the drive or open MakeMKV, the seeking noises start again and just forever tries to read and load never getting anywhere. All that said... it plays flawlessly in my PS5. Not even a little skip like it's just seeking past a scratch. Flawless playback. I'm torn between blaming the new drive and blaming the disc. All my other UHD discs read perfectly fine and ripped a small sample of discs just to be sure. So I am leaning towards blaming the disc.

But i'm sure Amazon will love another return of this box set since the last one had a disc explode killing my ASUS drive. Ironically, it was disc #6 also that exploded. (can share that story in another topic if any interested)

Would greatly appreciate any insight and suggestions.

[dcoke22]

It has been my experience that some discs and some drives just don't get along. That's why I now have 3 different optical drives. When a disc doesn't work in my main drive, I try one of my other drives. Often, but not always, it works fine. In fact, I try a different drive even before I clean the disc. Having multiple different optical drives has greatly reduced my frustration from rips erroring out.

As a side benefit, MakeMKV has a 'single drive mode' that makes it easy to launch multiple instances of MakeMKV and rip more than one disc at the same time.

If you go the second drive route, since you have a LG WH16NS40, consider getting a BU40N and/or a Pioneer drive.

[theemanofsteele]

This is a solid theory that never occurred to me. It's also not entirely surprising but def a bit frustrating. Sounds like I may need to add another drive to the tower.

Could you ball park a percentage you find don't work in your main drive and have to resort to a secondary? At least for UHD. I've yet to run in to a temperamental BR disc.

Thanks!

[Coopervid]

Try this: Flash your drive with WH16NS60 1.03 MK firmware. I had best results with problematic 3-layer discs.

[theemanofsteele]

Try this: Flash your drive with WH16NS60 1.03 MK firmware. I had best results with problematic 3-layer discs.

So..... This actually did the trick.

Still wasn't as smooth as expected though.
When I put the disc in, there were a number of the grinding seek noises still and the disc never registered with windows. I then fired up MakeMKV and more seek noises and then it did read the disc and windows saw it as well. So, full send. Opened the disc with MakeMKV but again, tons of seek noises. Got to the title screen and was able to select the titles. After that, it copied and behaved normally.

Super relieved that it finally copied! But all the extra noises were a bit annoying and concerning to say the least. *shrug*

Appreciate the tip!

[dcoke22]

Could you ball park a percentage you find don't work in your main drive and have to resort to a secondary? At least for UHD. I've yet to run in to a temperamental BR disc.

I'd say 5% - 10% of discs for me.

[vseven]

I just wanted to comment that I got the Harry Potter 4k last year around Christmas and two of the eight disks would not rip with multiple read errors. I initiated a return through Amazon and asked for a replacement. Replacement came with a cracked case and disks floating around inside. However the two that wouldn't rip before did so I put those two "good" disks into the original non-broken case and sent the broken case and two "bad" disks (possibly others...) back. So now I know I have a full good set of 8 disks.

Also to repeat what @dcoke22 said some disks and drives just don't seem to play nice. I am using a BP60NB10 and a BP50NB40, both using a single USB-C to USB-mini cable. Both rip 4K around the same speed (1.26 - 1.28 Gb/min in testing) but one will randomly have issues with standard DVD's (see's them as blank like your issue) and the other will randomly have issues with large 4Ks (assuming triple layer issue). And this is brand new out of the case disks. So when one fails I switch to the other and vice versa. So far so good with the combo. And also as mentioned the single drive mode can be helpful when I buy too many disks on a good sale and want to rip multiples at once.

[theemanofsteele]

Sorry for not replying for a while.

Thanks for the responses. Super insightful! I decided that having a second drive would be most wise. I caved and bit the bullet (Really? in this economy? ) and got a Pioneer BDR-S13UBK.
Since my last posting, I've acquired additional 4k discs with some in the bunch being temperamental. I've thrown them all at this Pioneer drive and it's read every single one without problem. Read speeds are slow (4x) but I can deal with that and have the peace of mind.
Sticker price stung a little but having two drives is really nice, especially one being a Pioneer.

So I think that just further speaks to what ya'll have already said. Some discs just won't play nice with some drives. Having multiple drives increases the chance of successful rips.

[scorp508]

Sorry for the thread necropsy, just piling on a bit here.

We bought the 8-movie 16-disc (4K + 1080P) set this week. So far, UHD discs 5 and 6 have given me read issues about halfway through with my ASUS drive. I cleaned UHD discs 5-8 with a little Dawn dish soap and tried again. Disc 5 still failed at 28GB out of 58GB. Maybe another drive is in order for these circumstances.

[SamuriHL]

A lot of us recommend Pioneer drives these days. Depending on your location grab one from one of the sellers on this forum.