www.makemkv.com

I acquired a Pioneer BDR-212DBK from a fellow forum participant recently. It was flashed to BDR-S12U.

I've already had an OWC Mercury Pro enclosure for an LG WH16NS40 for a couple of years, so I had been switching back and forth between having it plugged into the WH16NS40 and the BDR-212DBK for a while. I had left the BDR-212DBK plugged in for many days at a time, if not weeks, turned on, sitting on top of the WH16NS40 with some insulation/cushion. Used it multiple times. Performed beautifully. Absolutely no issues.

I got tired of unplugging and plugging, so eventually I bought another OWC Mercury Pro a few weeks ago. Installed the Pioneer drive into it. I left the switch turned on, used it multiple times since installing.

A couple of days ago, I went to press the eject button to load a disc. Tray won't open. Drive is dead. I took the drive apart and can't really tell what fried, but I did detect some kind of a burnt electrolytic smell.

I'm pretty angry about this given the Pioneer situation. I remember Billycar11 mentioning Vantec enclosures killing drives. I don't know if this was a freak accident, but I am guessing new OWC enclosures may follow suit.

I wanted to start this thread to inform and track. If you have similar experiences (which I hope you don't), please add them here.

i am defiantly leaning toward just saying if you get a desktop drive put it in a pc direct with sata with a good quality psu gold rated or better from a major brand like corsair no more junk 5.25 cases.

we need to do all we can now to preserve these optical drives

and if you need external drive then get a native usb drive

hundreds of pioneers i sold were killed to junky psu's it had to be stopped

larhaus wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 12, 2026 10:39 pm

I remember Billycar11 mentioning Vantec enclosures killing drives.

Trying to be a positive example here. never had any problems with the Vantec NexStar DX and never any problems with the Vantec NexStar DX 2 with all of my three drives within one of them.