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I have a BU40N that was working great for the past few days as I was ripping a UHD box set.

I ran into a scratched disc in the set and it seems to have triggered something. After ripping the next UHD blu-ray after skipping the scratched one because it failed to rip, my BU40N basically fails to power up all the way. This was after trying but failing to rip non-scratched UHD blu-ray disks. Now it will get as far as getting enough power to open the tray but it doesn't show up in as a device, so it's failing to initialize. I am using a usb to sata with external power to slimline adapter to the BU40N.

I have tried 3 different usb to sata adapters and they all work for normal 3.5" HDD. I have tried multiple usb 3.0/3.1/2.0 ports. I tried plugging it in directly to my computers sata ports with sata power and it still didn't connect correctly. I have also tried a different computer with same results.

I had this issue a bit ago and just leaving it unplugged over night fixed it. I am going to try that now.

What is causing this? Is this a firmware bug or failing electical components? Fuse starting to fail? Capacitors failing?

I am not familiar with what fails electrically with bluray drives outside of the laser which seems to work fine up until this issue occurs.

I don't have a BU40N, but it has been my experience with the 3 optical drives I do have that sometimes they get confused and need to be power cycled. There is effectively a very tiny computer inside an optical drive that runs the firmware. Sometimes it crashes or otherwise becomes confused and needs to be rebooted. The only way to do that is to power cycle the drive. Rebooting the computer your optical drive is attached to is not enough.

My drives are full sized 'internal' drives that are in powered external enclosures. I can simply flip the power switch on the back, wait a few moments, then turn them back on. If the drives were inside a computer, I'd have to completely power off the machine (a reboot isn't enough). I don't have any experience with your particular attachment method, but surely there's a way to power cycle the drive. It probably wouldn't hurt to power cycle the USB to SATA adapter as well.

You mentioned that you've tried various methods of connecting your optical drive to your computer. Presumably this has had the effect of power cycling the drive after it got confused after getting stuck on a scratched disc. If that's the case, there might be something else that's wrong with your drive.

MakeMKV takes the rare step of verifying the data that is read from the disc is correct. Blu-rays include this checksum data as part of the data on the disc (although most players choose to ignore it). When the data read is incorrect, MakeMKV will ask the drive to read it again. The IO tab of MakeMKV's preferences has a 'read retry count' setting. I've observed that when MakeMKV encounters problematic discs and asks the optical drive to re-read data, this is the most likely scenario for things to go sideways and require the drive to be power cycled. Asking the drive to re-read data isn't dangerous or even 'hard' on the drive, but it is more work than just blindly reading data from the beginning to the end. I'm speculating here, but it seems logical that if some of the electronics of the optical drive were near the end of their life for whatever reason, the extra work involved with trying to re-read through a scratched disc might have used up whatever life was left.

Figured the issue out. Looks like the ribbon cable providing power and data is failing. When the tray is open it connects fine and when it is closed it disconnects. Now I will see if I can find a new ribbon cable.