Looking for an external USB drive to rip blu-rays (UK)

[Mooncake]

Hello,

I'm starting to build my first home media server and MakeMKV has quickly become the tool of choice. Brilliant.

I need an external drive to rip the blu-rays I have. I'm based in the UK. Are there any particular drives which would be an easy purchase to get me going?

Thanks,
Mooncake

[dcoke22]

A reasonable place to start is with the Verbatim 43888. If you're lucky, it'll come with an older Pioneer drive inside that'll work out of the box with MakeMKV for ripping everything, including 4K UHDs. If you're not quite as lucky, it'll come with an LG BU40N drive inside that'll need to be flashed to be able to rip everything.

Verbatim 43888 with LG drive?

If you have a Windows computer, there's a handy utility for flashing that makes it pretty easy. The forum has a maintained, comprehensive guide to flashing: Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide

If you don't want to mess with flashing at all, Asmcom is a seller on this forum, selling flashed and tested drives, ready to go. They're based in Ireland if I recall correctly. https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=19387 Asmcom had some health difficulties last year which put the business on pause, but it should be starting up again very soon.

If you don't want to wait for Asmcom and want a Pioneer drive, Billycar11 (USA) or MartyMcNuts (Australia) might be able to help you out.

Finally, don't be afraid to consider an 'internal' optical drive. You can buy an external enclosure for an internal optical drive that will power it and allow it to be connected via USB. Personally, I have 4 internal optical drives all in external enclosures sitting on my desk connected with USB.

[Mooncake]

Hello @dcoke22. Thank you. That was an excellent reply and full of really useful information.

Cheers.

[Mooncake]

All sorted now.