Pioneer bdc td03

[Phage]

Hi All,

As a long time user this is the first time I have an issue with ripping.
As PCs no longer have optical drives I bought a Pioneer bdc td03 in a caddy.
It reads DVDs perfectly but when I load a BR, I get the following



I now understand that Libredrive may not work - but why then does it work for DVDs ? Is there a firmware update or other issue ?
Any help gratefully received

Thanks

[Woodstock]

LibreDrive isn't all that important for DVDs. MakeMKV can work around most hardware-enforced DVD restrictions

But if MakeMKV is saying "No disk", that's the response it got back from the operating system. When was the last time you did a power-down reset on this computer? It may be as simple as Windows getting confused about the drive.

[Phage]

It gets turned off every night

[Woodstock]

That certainly counts as a reset, assuming you're shutting down/power off, rather than hibernation/sleep mode. The point is that the hardware itself is reset, in addition to the software.

The drive sees NO BDs? For example, if you pop a BD in and open up Explorer, there is no disk seen? The possibility is that one laser has failed. The best BD drives use a separate (red) laser for DVD, because some DVDs do not read correctly with the "blue" laser. Given the age and type of the drive, that could happen.

It may be time for a replacement drive.

[Phage]

Yes - complete power down. I think you're right as it doesn't show up at all with a BR inserted.
A dvd appears straight away

[Taylorjulie]

I have also the same proplem. I will replacement drive. Thanks

[NullNix]

I think this is sheer old age. I've had this drive since shortly after it went on sale (early 2010), and it was fine for about the first eight years, but since then has been failing like this more and more often. Repeated reinsertions often fix it, or a poweroff of the drive, but it's a right drag.

Frankly, this drive is both old, was fairly cheaply made even when it was new, and is by modern standards very slow (I don't think it's riplocked: I think it's just not capable of reading at more than 11MiB/s no matter what, which equates to about 2.5x on blurays. DVDs see the same peak data rate: it's a reasonable data rate for DVDs, which is probably what most of the hardware was originally designed for back in the 2000s). It's well past time to replace it. I have no idea why anyone would buy a ten year old bluray drive unless they were desperately short of money, or it was mis-sold to them without a warning that this drive is bordering on prehistoric. (Still having one because they've had it for eleven years and it still kind of works is a different matter. )

I don't know how long it's been since the thing was manufactured. I can see no sign of any firmware for it later than 2013 (for the versions built in to now-antique Vaios).

[NullNix]

I think this is sheer old age. I've had this drive since shortly after it went on sale (early 2010), and it was fine for about the first eight years, but since then has been failing like this more and more often. Repeated reinsertions often fix it, or a poweroff of the drive, but it's a right drag.

So I posted this yesterday -- and by today, it had moved from often failing at insertion time to spraying spurious read errors (LC-UNCORRECTABLE) at random points on random discs (even when e.g. reading the root directory) and now it won't turn on at all. I think it's dead, Jim.

Upgraded to an LG WH14NS40, using an Inateck UA1001 so I can plug it in intermittently. Very happy with the upgrade: works flawlessly, usually at 4.5x to 8.5x read speed (and this is with the original firmware, so not "unrestricted" read speed: frankly over 4x faster than the previous drive still feels pretty unrestricted to me!)