Device not found

[BaronVonJ]

I have a Samsung SE-506CB that is working ok with MakeMKV on Mac, but on Windows (8.1) I'm having a lot of problems. First, whenever I insert an encrypted BD/DVD, the drive seems to disconnect and reconnect continuously, and in the event that it stays mapped/mounted, MakeMKV will fail to scan the disc with a "Device not found" error. Windows says the driver is up to date and the firmware is current. I'm thinking there's some AACS thing going on and maybe someone can point me in he right direction there.

[Woodstock]

Connect and disconnect cycles generally would be power related. A lot of USB drives have issues with how much power a computer will supply to them, and I see at least one review that points out that this drive can't be hooked up through a hub, due to power issues.

If you are attached to the computer itself, does it fully power its USB ports? A lot do not. This will be a problem. Standard USB 2.0 ports are rated to deliver just .5 amp... and the drive is rated to use almost 3 times that! I'm surprised it did not come with a two-head cable.

[BaronVonJ]

Thanks for the tip, would not have considered that. I was able to test the drive out on a Mac Mini where it seems to work fine, and a laptop running Ubuntu 14.10 where it again runs fine. Also in the same Windows machine (a Surface Pro 3 where I've successfully used a Seagate Backup portable USB3 which is powered through the USB port) the drive is working fine with regular data discs, it's just [encrypted] movie discs (both Blu-ray and DVD) that exhibit this behavior. So I'm pretty sure it's just some stupid copyright control BS. I tried loading the trial version of WinDVD 11 to no avail. The drive comes with PowerDVD 9, which doesn't support Windows 8 and is EOL, so I guess I'll give the PowerDVD 14 trial a go.

[Woodstock]

With a Surface 3, I would suspect the power at the USB port is limited, especially if you're not using external power. Putting the drive on a POWERED hub that is attached to the S3 may help. The recommendation against using a hub usually applies to unpowered ones, which are splitting the (limited) current from the computer between itself and all the devices plugged in to it.

You have the issue that there is more power being used when you start to decrypt data (the CPU kicks into higher speed and uses more electrical power), which may take away from what can be fed to the USB drive. And the BD doesn't use full power at idle or low speed (normal reading speeds), but it goes up pretty fast as the drive goes to half or faster speed.

[BaronVonJ]

The extra load during decryption makes sense, hadn't considered that. Will check out a powered hub. Thanks.

[BaronVonJ]

Solution confirmed, using a powered hub everything is working fine.