Hi, I suspect this is just the usual dead disc problem which I've had with another film, Crank 2 High Voltage. But odd thing is it works in my Blu-Ray player, so would like a second opinion please.
Pandorum worked fine in 2020 when I last ripped the disc in a BH16NS55 drive flashed with Mk firmware. Went to rip it again last week and it is no longer recognised, MakeMKV just says "No Disc" after it spins up and down a few times. Windows doesn't see a disc in the drive either. As I say the disc plays fine in my Blu-Ray player though (Panasonic DMP-UB900).
Tried cleaning disc several times very very thoroughly, but no change. I recently bought a WH16NS40, so also flashed with MK firmware and I tried it with that drive instead, but it does the same thing. I went on eBay and bought a cheap replacement disc which showed up and looked clean enough (no marks or anything) but has the exact same issue. Tried cleaning the replacement anyway a few times, still not recognised. Even tried downgrading to an older MK firmware on the drive, which also didn't work for either disc, then I tried upgrading back to the original stock firmware (1.05) for the drive using the official firmware flashing tool, still doesn't recognise the discs.
I'm assuming they are both dead and I just got unlucky with the second one (as mentioned already, I had the same issue with Crank 2 but a replacement bought from eBay worked fine - well for about a year then that replacement died as well, so I ended up getting a third replacement for it which still works but this time I've made a full backup image of the disc).
Pandorum (2009) - "No disc"
Re: Pandorum (2009) - "No disc"
It was the disc. I ended up buying yet another copy and sent the first one back and this one worked.
Annoyingly though, I went to rip another blu-ray I'd messed the encodes up on, so I ripped this disc last week and it worked fine. Put it in the drive and it was giving me no disc in MakeMKV. Cleaned it, tried again, No disc!
So I punched the drive. In a fit of rage I brought my fist down on it hard because I was really angry. You may wonder how I did that as it's an internal drive; well it's not internally fitted to my PC you see, my computer case has no optical drive bays so I ran a power and SATA cable out the back of it onto my desk and that's where the drive sits in an enclosure which I removed the back off of so I could connect the cables to it.
Anyway I hit it, and it started vibrating really loud and... Oh look, the disc started to be recognised again! Only issue was it was vibrating so bad I obviously broke something in it and it was probably going to damage the disc so I have remove it. Put my old drive back in and that still works fine, read the disc first go.
I don't think I'll be buying LG drives ever again. They apparently don't make them like they used to.
Annoyingly though, I went to rip another blu-ray I'd messed the encodes up on, so I ripped this disc last week and it worked fine. Put it in the drive and it was giving me no disc in MakeMKV. Cleaned it, tried again, No disc!
So I punched the drive. In a fit of rage I brought my fist down on it hard because I was really angry. You may wonder how I did that as it's an internal drive; well it's not internally fitted to my PC you see, my computer case has no optical drive bays so I ran a power and SATA cable out the back of it onto my desk and that's where the drive sits in an enclosure which I removed the back off of so I could connect the cables to it.
Anyway I hit it, and it started vibrating really loud and... Oh look, the disc started to be recognised again! Only issue was it was vibrating so bad I obviously broke something in it and it was probably going to damage the disc so I have remove it. Put my old drive back in and that still works fine, read the disc first go.
I don't think I'll be buying LG drives ever again. They apparently don't make them like they used to.
Re: Pandorum (2009) - "No disc"
You know they make enclosures for optical drives. Put the drive in the box and plug it into your computer via USB.
There's the OWC Mercury Pro. I have two of these, one with an ASUS drive and one with an LG drive. Vantec makes enclosures too. I have a Vantec NexStar DX NST-536S3-BK with a Pioneer drive inside since the Pioneer won't fit into a Mercury Pro enclosure.
None of these will make any individual optical drive work any better, but they look less janky.
As a side note, it is always my keyboard that ends up taking the brunt of my physical rage.
There's the OWC Mercury Pro. I have two of these, one with an ASUS drive and one with an LG drive. Vantec makes enclosures too. I have a Vantec NexStar DX NST-536S3-BK with a Pioneer drive inside since the Pioneer won't fit into a Mercury Pro enclosure.
None of these will make any individual optical drive work any better, but they look less janky.
As a side note, it is always my keyboard that ends up taking the brunt of my physical rage.
Re: Pandorum (2009) - "No disc"
Oh yea I've looked at enclosures, because you're right of course; having the bare drive on the desk does look totally out of place, although the enclosures tend to be a bit pricey over here for some reason (that OWC costs around £80). I did look into getting some sort of cover for the drive just so it looked a bit less "bare metal" but couldn't find anything fit for purpose.
I don't normally punch the drives incidentally (my keyboard is also the thing that usually gets the brunt of my anger issues), I just was so annoyed that this new drive stopped reading a disc inside of a week when it worked fine before. The fact is I only bought the WH16 new because of Pandorum, as well as a couple of other films were giving me issues where as they hadn't beore and I couldn't believe the discs were dead or dying and decided it *must* be the drive. But turned out of course Pandorum was dead, somehow, one of the others started working again after I cleaned it several times with Isopropanol of all things, and the third disc works but kicks out read errors when I try and rip the movie off it, no amount of cleaning fixed that so it must also be on the way out too.
In other words I had no need to replace the BH16 drive in the first place. So now I have a dodgy WH16 which isn't fit for purpose even without my fist-damage.
I don't normally punch the drives incidentally (my keyboard is also the thing that usually gets the brunt of my anger issues), I just was so annoyed that this new drive stopped reading a disc inside of a week when it worked fine before. The fact is I only bought the WH16 new because of Pandorum, as well as a couple of other films were giving me issues where as they hadn't beore and I couldn't believe the discs were dead or dying and decided it *must* be the drive. But turned out of course Pandorum was dead, somehow, one of the others started working again after I cleaned it several times with Isopropanol of all things, and the third disc works but kicks out read errors when I try and rip the movie off it, no amount of cleaning fixed that so it must also be on the way out too.
In other words I had no need to replace the BH16 drive in the first place. So now I have a dodgy WH16 which isn't fit for purpose even without my fist-damage.