Hey all, just thought I would post a recent experience I've had to add to the conversation here.
First of all, I had to redo my Plex server who trashed it's config a couple weeks back due to some things I was testing, and the result didn't work as it usually does. Anyway because of this, I decided to wipe my Plex drive and start over with a different filesystem. Anyway I initially had an LG BP50NB40 that I had flashed several years ago to the last firmware which was 1.0.3 Anyway I had always been able to use this drive without issue connected to my iMac directly using the main connector of the Y plug as the iMac has USB 3.0, and the drive even worked for a short time on my Anker 60W powered USB 3 hub. Suddenly while re-ripping discs, the LG started flipping out, going into seek loops and having to be power cycled to stop. Along with this I started getting read errors and failures for discs that had previously worked fine on the same drive, the first time around of ripping.
It got to the point where the drive wouldn't even come online where the mac would recognize it, but it had power to spin up a disc, and sometimes it would come online and then disconnect a few minutes later. So, if it was a power issue, it's most likely due to something in the drive failing as it was several years old, and it now has the same behavior regardless of port, or computer, or cable used.
Anyway I bought I pioneer drive off Amazon to replace it:
https://www.amazon.com/PIONEER-External ... 0C367V1QW/ and it works perfectly and it's extremely fast. It also has it's own power supply, and works over USB 3.0 speeds. Question, I still have one disc that WON"T rip regardless of what I do, even cleaned it, it's the older disc of Stargate Extended cut with ACSv3 and it's also a gold disc, and I know some players have issues with Gold discs, the particular issues with this one are like described in the other thread regarding this title, it hangs at analyzing seamless segments, and in backup mode, it copies all but the movie, and fails with hash error. Since it's a 20+ year old disc now, I was wondering if the newer release of the movie is more reliable to rip. I could get another LG drive as a backup as the disc works in that model drive, but I'd rather stick to one drive if I can, since just about all my discs have worked in the pioneer. I rarely have issues with MakeMKV, or ripping, so that's why you don't hear from me much. I just thought I would share this experience, provide a link to the drive I got, and ask about the disc releases, to see what people thought.
I'm running MakeMKV v1.17.7 on a late 2015, 27" 5K iMac, with Monterey 12.7.5. I also had issues with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but after giving the disc a good clean, and then doing a backup, I was able to re-rip from backup. That also was a strange disc, I bought it May 9th of this year, and it ripped first time out of the box with the LG drive. The second time around, it failed on both drives with the typical medium read error messages, but then the LG drive died. So, at least I was able to get a new rip with the new drive.
Anyway, thanks for the good info here, and hope this post can help someone else. Have a great day!
