LG WH16NS40 (OWC enclosure) dead?

[Dagwood]

My LG Blu-ray Disc drive (LG WH16NS40) seems to have died. I thought I'd check with the collective smart people to get opinions. I purchased this drive from OWC back in late Dec'16. It came with the 1.02 firmware which I figured out from these forums have to upgrade to 1.03.

A few years ago I was able to upgrade it to 1.05 and it worked for UHD discs. It used to be connected (working) to my 2015 i7 iMac and but I upgraded to a new M4 iMac soon after they came out. After I moved/migrated all my software and gear over to the new desktop I tried out the LG with both DVDs & BDs and it worked well.

After Christmas I went to re-rip a Christmas movie that we had watched and it had issues with the audio cutting out. I put the DVD in and it spun around for a while and then got ejected. Tried multiple times with this DVD, other DVDs and multiple BDs with the same results. I have an old Apple slimline player in an OWC usb 2.0 case that I took out of a MacBook years ago. With that drive connected to the iMac I was able to use Handbrake to re-backup that DVD.

I have tried to re-flash the LG drive with 1.05, 1.02 and 1.03. No change. I tried the 1.01 restore but I have not successfully flashed it. I've tried using "main, enc and full" when flashing with no results. The only changes I can think of since it last worked was a new TB4 hub and the update from macOS from 15.1 -> 15.2. I tried plugging the drive direct to the iMac with 2 different Apple USC-C to A adapters as well as another I 3.0 one I purchased from amazon. No luck.

I have also blew out the dust with compressed air and taken it totally apart and cleaned it inside along with cleaning the optical heads with isopropyl alcohol (and cleaned the dried residue after). No luck. I've tried system permissions tricks that I've found in these forums. No luck...

Frustrating since this thing was working just a month ago. Has this LG died or did macOS Sequoia 15.2 break it?????

[dcoke22]

The Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide says your drive should be on the WH16NS60 1.02MK firmware. This is considered the best firmware for the internal LG drives.

In any case, even without MakeMKV running, if you put a DVD in an optical drive, your Mac should 'see' it and mount it. It'll show up in Finder under Locations in the sidebar or wherever just like when you plug in an external drive or USB stick.

[Dagwood]

yeah, the 1.05 is where I stopped flashing and took a screenshot to post. It's back on 1.02MK (WH16NS60) and still doesn't work. It's not a makeMKV problem. It just won't mount any disk now so it's a hardware and/or macOS 15.2 issue. Curiously, it worked for over a year on 1.05.

I just received a Pioneer BDR-2213 from Billycar11 and will soon be putting it in the OWC enclosure that the LG is currently in.