www.makemkv.com

Hi Folks,

About 1 in 4 times I try to rip a DVD, MakeMKV will get 1-2 titles in, and the give an error that drive can no longer be found. My DVD drive will disappear from Explorer and Device manager, and unplugging it and plugging it back in to the motherboard does nothing. The only way to get it to come back is to shut down, cycle the power supply, and then restart (clear the buffers or whatever). A normal restart will not bring the drive back. Has anyone else encountered this problem or know how to prevent it?


Thanks.

If it disappears from Explorer, the operating system lost track of it, and MakeMKV was just reporting the problem.

Is this a USB drive? If so, is it POWERED by the USB, or a separate power supply?

USB bus-powered DVD and BD drives have a history of not getting sufficient power to spin at full speed, unless you take care to plug them in to the "right port" on the computer. This is not a problem for most uses, as the operating system won't spin them up to full speed, but MakeMKV WILL, on a regular basis.

The drive will then momentarily shut down communications, which, depending upon how the operating system reacts, could be a momentary error, or a big issue.

Plugging into an unpowered hub is NOT a good idea, because the USB power from a single motherboard port is split too many ways. Some motherboards also only provide the minimum-required power to the USB ports. Some bus-powered USB drives "fix" this will a dual-head cable, to pull power from more than one USB port at a time... but that counts on plugging into two motherboard ports OR two powered hub ports.

It is a SATA internal DVD drive in a desktop tower. I have had this drive for 3+ years and this is literally the first time it's happened, and it only has ever happened using MakeMKV. Unplugging it and plugging it back in was done after computer restarts, or while the computer was shut down.

I have now used MakemKV to rip 36 DVDs, and it has happened ~10 times.

Being a SATA drive, it is likely some interaction with the motherboard that is making it unavailable to the operating system. If the MB decides it isn't there, it isn't.

Do you have any other program that can run the drive up to its maximum speed for at least 10 or 15 seconds? Copying a data disk should be able to get it up there.

I was able to successfully take a CD-RW, format it for Data, copy a 300mb file onto it, wipe it, reformat it, and repeat the process twice with no problem.

Unfortunately, that won't run it at full rotational speed. The drive will limit itself to the speed the CD-RW reports as its top write speed. What you need is to do read testing where the optical drive is the limiting factor, rather than the optical disk or your hard drive.

Hmm... maybe a virus scan of a BD would do it? Have to test that here....

I have the same problem with similar hardware (SATA internal DVD with Make MLLV 1.8.11)
Your shut down, then restart fix works for me also.
Thanx

Sounds like the drive is about to fail..

Funny thing is the dvd drive only disappears from makemkv

I still see it in win explorer, device manager, etc

Can you then insert a dvd with data and run the data from the dvd? While makemkv cant see/use the dvd?

"Still see it in explorer".... you can open the disk, and navigate to the directories on it?

You may find that Explorer is caching what it saw earlier, and actually accessing the disk no longer works.