ASUS BW-16D1HT 3.10

[rsaotome]

Also bought a new in box Chinese retail ver of ASUS BW-16D1HT, it came with an unpatched 3.10 firmware, from a Chinese seller on eBay, a different seller than the one who sold me 2 lemon LG WH16NS60 with SVC CODE: NS40 drives.

So I used "DE_ASUS_BW-16D1HT_3.10_MK.bin" with SDFtool Flasher 1.3.6, and lo & behold, the drive will read only a few UHD discs, the rest, I just hear it crunching, until it fails (on proven good UHD's).

I have 5 older BW-16D1HT drives, 3 from the US, 2 from China, used the exact same firmware as above "DE_ASUS_BW-16D1HT_3.10_MK.bin", but flashed them with SDFtool Flasher 1.3.5 instead.

Is SDFtool Flasher 1.3.6 causing me to now have 3 brand new lemon drives, or did I just get really unlucky?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[MartyMcNuts]

Also bought a new in box Chinese retail ver of ASUS BW-16D1HT, it came with an unpatched 3.10 firmware, from a Chinese seller on eBay, a different seller than the one who sold me 2 lemon LG WH16NS60 with SVC CODE: NS40 drives.

So I used "DE_ASUS_BW-16D1HT_3.10_MK.bin" with SDFtool Flasher 1.3.6, and lo & behold, the drive will read only a few UHD discs, the rest, I just hear it crunching, until it fails (on proven good UHD's).

I have 5 older BW-16D1HT drives, 3 from the US, 2 from China, used the exact same firmware as above "DE_ASUS_BW-16D1HT_3.10_MK.bin", but flashed them with SDFtool Flasher 1.3.5 instead.

Is SDFtool Flasher 1.3.6 causing me to now have 3 brand new lemon drives, or did I just get really unlucky?

Any advice would be appreciated.

The flasher doesn't do anything different. Read the version updates in the SDFtool Flasher thread.

You are probably getting the junk, fake drives from China.

[rsaotome]

Great, well, it has the MT1959, so I was able to flash it, but that didn't seem to matter, since it won't read anything.

When you say junk, do you mean they just took spare parts, slapped it together, threw it in a Chinese retail box with all the usual stuff & sold it as UHD Friendly for $109?

[MartyMcNuts]

Great, well, it has the MT1959, so I was able to flash it, but that didn't seem to matter, since it won't read anything.

When you say junk, do you mean they just took spare parts, slapped it together, threw it in a Chinese retail box with all the usual stuff & sold it as UHD Friendly for $109?

It depends on the shell used. If it has a big circle on top, then yes it’s a fake. If it has a flat top with 4 little indentations then it’s likely a real one but they are junk drives anyway. Very poor quality. ASUS don’t actually make drives, they buy from LG and Pioneer. The real BW-16D1HT is a rebadged LG WH16NS40 with ASUS firmware installed. The LG internal drives are of poor quality anyway as their QC went to shit back in 2020.

[rsaotome]

Eh, trash or not, I just use them to rip & archive, if they die prematurely, well, won't be surprised, 3 of 8 of them have died on me over the last 4 years, but at retail, I was paying around $70 for each, until they stopped making them. But the failure rate is why I am looking for spares.