Asus BW-16D1HT wont read CD, but reads DVD and BLURAY

[neverasusagane]

Hi

As topic states

An Asus BW-16D1HT firmware 3.0 bought long time ago but it hardly ever gets used. I've burnt less than 10 discs in total and disc-read for maybe 15 hours of use total.

Today I had reasons to read/write CDR disc, but found that it wouldn't accept empty disc "no disc", I then proceeded trying other CDR and factory cd's, but none worked.

I went over to try DVDs and BLURAY discs, and they all seem to work fine.

I then went as far as bringing a CDR I know I did burn with this same device, and that CD works to this day in my cars cd player, but my Asus BW-16D1HT still won't read it.

I've seen some topics where the device stops reading blurays, or dvd's but not cd's.

I tried to disassemble the device to see if the laser lense was dirty, but I couldn't get my head around of how to disassemble it to get to the laser optics without breaking it. I know it's diffrent laser wavelength for diffrent type of media, but arent they all placed in the same optics, so if it was dirty to the point it can't read I should have problem reading any media?

Looking forward for answer
Thanks

[dcoke22]

There's usually two sets of optics. One is for CDs and DVDs and the other is for blu-rays and UHDs. For most people, when one of the lasers stops working, it'll work for CDs/DVDs and not blu-ray/UHD or vice versa.

MakeMKV won't read CDs. You have to use other software to read a CD.

[MSIVST]

I had a similar issue and wanted to chime-in ...

In Sept of 2025, I purchased a used Asus BW-16D1HT (manufactured Sept 2024) from eBay that came with stock 3.11 firmware (as it left the factory - confirmed by chatting with ASUS Support).

I flashed it to 3.10MK right away, and was copying BR/UHD discs without issue.

Recently, I came accross some old CDs/DVDs that I wanted to put on a media center PC, so put them in the drive to be copied ...

None of them worked! It seems red laser media would not be recognised on this drive.

Digging into the firmware's and logging the outputs - It seems the drive spins and focuses, then measures the light reflected back - That measurement must spike above a fixed threshold before the firmware declares a disc present - Red media never spikes, and therefor never reports a disc. Bluray media spikes no problem.

I tested factory 3.11, stock 3.10, MK 3.10, and OmniDrive 3.02 - all fail identically.

The spike is anologue and produced by the controller/opto hardware from the drive - The firmware has zero writes to it, and therefor cannot be tweaked or changed.

Failure points could be:
(a) red/IR laser diode emission degraded or dead (from aging/ESD/shock),
(b) contamination/damage on the red IR lens path (although still did not work after cleaning),
(c) red focus/flex or photodetector return failure.

I just found it odd that a drive is failing at less than two years old ...

If i figure anything else about it I will report back