Looking to buy a "ready" out of the box ripper

[rdhjdh]

I am a complete non-techie. We have recently bought a new home, and it is so much smarter than us! We have a Control4 System that I am buying 2 8GB Western Digital Drives in a bay. The thought is to load all our blu ray movies (as well as photos and songs) on them, then we can access them through Control4 throughout our 8 tvs through Plex loaded on the Drives. So on to what I think I need. I have the blu ray movies. I will have the Hard Drives. I have a computer. I will be getting Plex and loading it onto the 2 hard drives, once I get them. I will have a blu ray player (I know that is NOT what I need).

I need a blu ray ripper that will allow 4K blu rays, regular blu rays, even dvds to somehow be copied from the blu ray to the hard drive (whether I go through the computer or not). I would like to use MakeMKV, I believe, based on all I've been reading and seeing on YouTube. Is there anywhere I can purchase a ripper with MakeMKV loaded already, or anything else I need to send them to Plex? What is the guarantee once I order it? Do they provide help in case I get "stuck"? Thank you! I've read about certain LG's and ASUS' that are good, particularly these:
LG WH16NS40 -- http://geni.us/XLWK
LG on B&H -- https://bhpho.to/2Gie5WB
ASUS BW-16D1HT -- http://geni.us/BEKWu6

I'm in the United States.

Thank you again.
Rdhjdh

[VarHD]

I am buying 2 8GB Western Digital Drives in a bay. The thought is to load all our blu ray movies (as well as photos and songs) on them

I hope that's a typo and you mean two 8 TB drives, not 8 GB because one single Blu-ray movie (not 4K) requires 20-30GB. If you want to sacrifice their quality, you could of course compress them to something smaller, but even then 8 GB is nothing, your phone has more memory than that so... if it's not a typo, go for 2 x 8 TB, not GB.

Is there anywhere I can purchase a ripper with MakeMKV loaded already

MakeMKV is not loaded on the device itself, it's just an app you'll install on your computer and use to rip the disc to the hard drive.

What is the guarantee once I order it? Do they provide help in case I get "stuck"?

You mean the drive manufacturer? No, you won't get any help from them because officially they don't support such practice for legal reasons. If you're talking about Plex, though, they will help you, they have a great help/support forum and FAQ, I'm sure you'll figure it out

Anyway, both drives you've mentioned are fine, but in both cases, there's really no guarantee you'll get them with a firmware that will let you rip UHD discs, unless you buy them on eBay from someone who gives such guarantee. However, even if you don't changing the firmware is actually easier and faster than writing a forum post In the past it used to be a real hassle and would involve doing things that could damage the drive, but nowadays we have access to the official firmware update software from the manufacturer so it's just a matter of pressing a button.

This is how you can change the firmware in 20 seconds: https://www.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic ... 16&t=18933 - you do that once and you're good.

[st4evr]

In addition to what VarHD advises, you are going to have to take the time to learn. From what you have written in your post, you are obviously lacking an understanding of how this all works. Not just with MakeMKV, but with any computer system and software/application. There are a lot of technical inaccuracies, incorrect assumptions and expectations in your post, which makes it obvious that you have yet to understand how this all works.

This is not a "set-it-and-forget-it" solution. Not for Plex, not for MakeMKV, and not for the server you are thinking of setting up.Why? Because for movie studios this is deemed not legal and they consistently put roadblocks in the way to prevent this or make it as hard as possible to discourage as many people as possible from doing this.

If you go into such a complex setup, you will be in way over your head if you do not have an understanding how this all works together from the start.

Google is your friend and start by understanding how backing/ripping media content works and any legalities in case that is a problem for you. How people then store it, and how it's played back. Google will provide thousands of step-by-step guides in both text and video detailing this kind of stuff for people of all tech levels.

Save yourself the headaches/frustration and go into it educated.

Or, another option is to pay someone to do the full setup and training with/for you in your home.

[rdhjdh]

I did mean 8 TB, sorry!

[DVD Maniac]

I did mean 8 TB, sorry!

And just to add to all the excellent advice here, if you are a serious collector you need to approach this NASA style. HDD's WILL fail eventually rendering your backup a complete waste of time. My approach is as follows

1. Only buy NAS or better HDD spec. Western Digital but Seagate have improved a lot recently
2. RAID your primary backup (hardware nor software)
3. Triple redundancy - backup the primary to external USB drives (files not backup chains)

All this of course is expensive but it will pay off in the long run as single backup can and will fail trust me.

[Woodstock]

I use a NAS with 8 drive slots from Synology. The box itself was USD1000, plus drives.

One day it shut down and wouldn't start up; failed power supply. Bought another, plugged the disks in from the failed unit, and it was operational in a few minutes, with all the settings from the original intact. It was rather slow for the first day or so, as it verified the 32TB array.

But the new unit could take larger drives, so I began swapping 10TB drives in, one at a time, and had it rebuild the array until there were enough to expand the array. Now it's 70TB... and over half full already.

Since I had the 4TB drives from the original array available, I put them through my read/write tester, and put them in the original NAS to trouble-shoot why the power supply stopped working, and maybe order a new one. It booted up and asked me how I wanted to configure things.

While I really have no problem building things from components, sometimes it's worth it to by "the right hardware".

[DVD Maniac]

You need to triple your redundancy, expensive but close to 100% failure.

Primary - ideally internal SATA NAS rated
Secondary - NAS again NAS rated drives
Third - USB external synced folder to external drives in USB caddy or adapter. Allway sync payed for works well and automatically backs up your primary.