Need a new BD drive, which one?

[drathbun]

Here's my after-purchase report. I got the LG model mentioned above and installed it this past weekend. With only one exception, every disc that I had received "read errors" on before was ripped successfully using the new drive. That in itself made it worth the cost to buy it. A secondary benefit is the new drive is not quite (but almost) twice as fast as my old drive.

I had experienced problems with several TV series (Black Sails among the worst offenders), as well as several movies. I had also experienced problems with some DVDs from a while back. The only error I am still seeing is with the extended version of The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies. Still can't successfully rip that one.

I was able to pop open my chassis (I have an older Dell desktop) and swap out the drive in about five minutes. For the cost, and for what I got out of it, it has worked out awesome. I wish I had done this months ago.

[UFO77]

Update on this for anyone who needs help in future.

Thanks for posting this Jenson!
I too have an older Pioneer drive that of late seems to be having trouble successfully reading BD properly and throwing up read errors.

I've taken a leap of faith abased purely on your detailed review and just purchased the exact same setup you've suggested.
I hope to have the same success (not holding you to anything), but I just wanted to say that I really appreciate you taking the time to post this detailed review.
You've saved me a lot of time procrastinating on what to buy .

I'll post an update in due course to see how I go.

[jcwillia1]

Update on this for anyone who needs help in future.

I bought these two items per the advice above.

1. LG WH16NS40 Super Multi Blue Internal SATA 16x Blu-ray Disc Rewriter
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E7 ... UTF8&psc=1

2. UNITEK USB 3.0 to SATA Converter Adapter Cable for 2.5 3.5 Inch Hard Drive Disk with 12V/2A Power Adapter
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GL ... UTF8&psc=1

They were super easy to hook up. The SATA converter enabled me to plug the LG drive into a regular USB outlet on my laptop.
I'm running Windows 10. Windows recognized the drive right away. I didn't have to download any software or fiddle around with it. Everytime put in a blu ray disc, I get a system message that the blu ray player with that movie is now available.

I can open MakeMKV, see the tracks on the disc, and rip them to my hard drive. It works perfectly.

So far (after just 1 day) I have successfully ripped 3 different blu ray discs that my older Pioneer blu ray drive could not rip, even after repeated cleanings of the disc and attempts to read it. So I'm quite happy with that performance!

The LG drive is also larger and sturdier than my older plug-in drive.

I'll probably just use the LG from now on, but I suppose if I ever run into a disc it can't handle, I can try my Pioneer again.

I'm very happy with this purchase and can highly recommend it. Thanks to jinx100 and others on this thread for the info.

NOTE: I haven't tried a Region B blu ray, but I hope it will work. I have a lot of UK stuff.

JH

This is super helpful but the second link doesn’t show any housing for the drive. Are you just leaving it uncovered?

[nizmoz]

I just ordered the same setup you did. I will report once I do a few discs to see how it behaves. Right now I have a Asus external Blu-ray burner and it gets to a bunch of discs lately and has issues where it will take a full day to do or it just can't do it. So I am hoping this will fix the issue.