WH16NS40: Blu-ray and UHD no longer work but DVD does

[ContinuousPalace]

My drive no longer seems to read Blu-ray and UHD discs, but does still read DVDs. This doesn’t seem to make sense. I’m trying to figure out whether the drive has somehow gone bad, or something very weird has happened to my PC.

I got the Lord of the Rings UHD set a couple of days ago and tried to rip them. The first failed a couple of times with a hash error (which the MakeMKV site says likely indicates a failing drive). But subsequent attempts worked fine. The next disc also ripped fine. But when I got to Return of the King, the drive just stopped detecting the disc.

I tried other UHDs, including discs I have successfully ripped before. They weren’t detected. I tried other Blu-rays. They weren’t detected. Then I tried a couple of DVDs. They all work.

I’ve tried restarting my PC—no change.

Is it somehow possible for this drive to stop working with Blu-rays but continue working with DVDs? Have I messed up the firmware or some other PC configuration?

[st4evr]

Unfortunately, these LG drives often appear to fail before or after flashing. Many discussions on bad QA/QC floating around on the part of LG. There are dozens of existing discussions from members noting/reporting similar issues with this drive and other LG “sister” drives (e.g, WH14NS40, WH16NS60, etc). Forum search may return many of those conversations alongside some of the actions taken by those members. Most of the time which may be simply returning the drive as the BD laser may have failed/died.

https://www.makemkv.com/forum/search.ph ... c+inserted

[ContinuousPalace]

Thanks for your reply. I did read through some of those posts before writing this one and thought my issue was different since DVDs still work.

I notice that some people say that they’ve had better luck with ASUS drives. Are those drives actually different, or are they still just LG drives sold under ASUS’s brand?

[Billycar11]

Thanks for your reply. I did read through some of those posts before writing this one and thought my issue was different since DVDs still work.

I notice that some people say that they’ve had better luck with ASUS drives. Are those drives actually different, or are they still just LG drives sold under ASUS’s brand?

same drive all the desktop lg and asus drives are the same.
try a BU40N its the most different and i have had the best luck with them.

[jonghotti]

Thanks for your reply. I did read through some of those posts before writing this one and thought my issue was different since DVDs still work.

I notice that some people say that they’ve had better luck with ASUS drives. Are those drives actually different, or are they still just LG drives sold under ASUS’s brand?

While the hardware inside may be the same the ASUS is running proprietary firmware and I've yet to see one suffer the "sudden LG drive death" that you describe happening to your WH16NS40.

Out of curiosity what build of MakeMKV are/were you running when this took place? And what version of firmware are you running on this drive?

I've said it before and I'll say it again the simple act of a rip failing should not take out the drive doing the ripping. This issue is relatively new and I'm starting to suspect the software is involved.

So ContinuousPalace do not hesitate to try an ASUS as your next drive.

[tkflactk]

I'm glad I'm not the only one with LG drive failures. I've had 3 different LG drives including this model fail in the same way all less than a year old, all with less than 50 rips, all are not returnable, and LG Canada will not service them no matter how much I am willing to pay. I have three LG Bluray drives that will only read DVDs. If ASUS has the same hardware but different firmware then I'm not interested in those drives. My question is Pioneer a good alternative? I've dropped a lot of money on LG and have been burned by their horrible products, I need something to last longer than 2-9months. Ideally I want a drive that will last as long as my LG DVD drives (8 years+)

[dcoke22]

My question is Pioneer a good alternative?

I'm pretty sure LibreDrive doesn't support Pioneer drives, so you can't rip 4K movies with them. (What is LibreDrive? viewtopic.php?f=19&t=18856)

Others on this forum report good luck with the LG BU40N. It is a slim drive and has different hardware than the desktop drives. (Drives Guide: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=19634)

Personally, I've had a WH16NS60 for a couple years and have put a few hundred discs through it. It still works fine. I also have a newer ASUS that works great. On rare occasions my LG gets confused and needs to be physically powered off in order to reboot the drive. My drives are in external enclosures with power switches, so this is easy. If the drive is internal on a PC, this typically means powering off the PC, not just rebooting it. You need to interrupt the power to the drive so it does a 'cold boot'.