PSA: Important details to be aware of when shopping for your first drive. New people read this!

[jonghotti]

PSA = Public Service Announcement. Contains some facts and some opinions.

I'm writing under the assumption the goal is to find a drive which can be flashed with current firmware and will leave the drive fully featured (UHD capable, Libre Drive compatible)

There have been many people stopping by lately that have had issues because it was determined they had flashed current firmware onto down rev hardware. Well what is down rev hardware and how do you spot it when buying a drive? The EASIEST way to spot trouble is by looking for a date or even a year. If the sticker with the serial number barcode has a MFG 2015 or below, beware. Right now on eBay there a bunch of ASUS BC-12B1ST and BW-12B1ST with pictures and if you click through them a year of 2013 can be seen. Just move on if your requirements are a drive that you can flash to current full featured firmware.

So if you take anything from this: look for the year/date manufactured anything 2014 or below definitely skip. 2015 I'm not an expert on exactly when the newer revisions were released but I've been LG WH16NS40s from December of 2015 with 1.00 current firmware that is now at 1.04 but these 2015 units, or the three that I owned did not flash well, meaning updates would hang, fail, complete sometimes but would result in a unstable unit. You probably won't see a lot of LG full sized drives, especially the WH16NS40 from 2015, 2016, 2017 for sale. Those are one of the if not the most common go to drive in the earlier days and easiest to spot. See one being sold it's most likely been rode hard and put away wet, or, very well used you don't want it.

What it is is an older build of the drive that used parts and designs sufficient to fill the requirements for that revision of hardware. Well sometime in 2015 those requirements changed (new drives to support multi layer blu rays) and thus in 2016 approximately the "current" hardware revision of the ASUS and LG drives was released.

Curent rev stickers are on the top, and one is circular. These are on the bottom, and no circular sticker. Fail #1

bottom.jpg (32.71 KiB) Viewed 21695 times

First clue this is a down rev box, current revision the plastic rear is made of black plastic, this is white. Fail #2

rear.jpg (10.2 KiB) Viewed 21695 times

The money shot, easiest clue you'll spot is manufacturing date of year 2013, err, fail #3

ASUS_BC-12B1ST_older_hardware_revision_beware.jpg (43.02 KiB) Viewed 21695 times

[asmcom]

Removed

[jonghotti]

I have edited my post and will state that the PSA worked, the seller modified the issues I called him out on. Thank you.

[bmwracer]

Please clarify what you mean by "2014 and below"

Do you mean 2014 and newer (2014, 2015, 2016, etc.) or 2014 and older (2014, 2013, 2012, etc.)?

I have an LG WH14NS40 dated 2014-09-18.

[Woodstock]

For UHD-capability, 2014 and earlier won't work. Even 2015 drives are unlikely to be UHD-capable unless they were made in the latter part of the year.

[bmwracer]

For UHD-capability, 2014 and earlier won't work. Even 2015 drives are unlikely to be UHD-capable unless they were made in the latter part of the year.

Ugh, that's unfortunate. And I just (luckily) restored my drive after I hosed it trying to upgrade.

Guess I should consider buying a new one.

Thanks for your reply.

[jonghotti]

For UHD-capability, 2014 and earlier won't work. Even 2015 drives are unlikely to be UHD-capable unless they were made in the latter part of the year.

Ugh, that's unfortunate. And I just (luckily) restored my drive after I hosed it trying to upgrade.

Guess I should consider buying a new one.

Thanks for your reply.

Yes 2015 drives with 1.00 firmware on current revision hardware avoid those like the plague or at the very least do not attempt to flash them they should work as is but are completely unreliable and sketchy. Rule of thumb is ususally to avoid 1.00 releases due to unforeseen bugs, like leaving a backdoor in firmware big enough to drive a truck through and bypass the brand newly released untraceable copy protection. Go team!

bmwracer sir I have a drive for you!

[Jman5150]

My drives keep spitting out my lg BH16NS40(2018) and asus 16d1ht (2020) im on a mac. Any ideas?

[jonghotti]

My drives keep spitting out my lg BH16NS40(2018) and asus 16d1ht (2020) im on a mac. Any ideas?

What's up now? Your drives keep spitting out your drives? I'm not being flippant I'm really trying to get what you're saying.

[jonghotti]

My drives keep spitting out my lg BH16NS40(2018) and asus 16d1ht (2020) im on a mac. Any ideas?

feel free to text me 650 850 2442 if you're able.

[Chris Kelly]

I second what (Jonghotti) is saying. Just taking two new Hitachi LG models which are the BH16NS40/WH16NS40 2020 and the Hitachi LG BH16NS55 2020.
These firmware have been assembled differently and the calibration data is not at the usual addresses. If you flash this firmware 1.04mk with 1.02DE you will run into problems. Some discs will perform and other discs will not.

I advise not to flash this firmware with LG/ASUS flasher as it will appear to work with some discs and other discs will fail. I have done extensive testing with this drive and other 2020 model drives from Hitachi LG. I purchased 5 discs of each title to make sure that my testing was accurate. Only after the failures on these titles, I had a closer look at the code with my eprom programmer. I discovered that some of the Calibration data is at different address locations.

Another example of this, I purchased BU40N and BU50N from a different supplier recently in the USA as the Hitachi LG factories were shut with the corona-virus and 10% of the batch was faulty that I received. Two reasons I sent the complete batch back is as follows:

1). The drives had a date of 2016, which was unacceptable. I have only previously sold 2019 / 2020 current Hitachi LG stock and have never had a faulty unit.

2). The BU40N labelled "BW41" does not work properly with the current BU40N-N firmware 1.03 as again some of the calibration data is in different address locations not the usual locations. Yes it will work with some discs and you really run into problems. Lets make it 3 reasons!

3). Customers do not want to buy old stock. Amazon and other eBay sellers are selling these at rock bottom prices as they are old hardware. I will stick with my 2019-2020 models as I know they work and Mike supplied new LibreDrive firmware that works with the newer type hardware.

Please do not advise customers to flash these down rev. hardware with new Libre-Drive files. I have seen on the forum recently where forum regulars are pointing customers to flash these Amazon drives with 1.03mk firmware. Please ask yourself this question, when a new drive hardware appears, mike requires a file upload to enable the new drive to work with newly generated LibreDrive firmware. Why does the old firmware not work? Because the drive is using different NV-RAM address locations you can see this with development tools. See pictures below of different models of BU40N and BU50N that can not be flashed with new current LibreDrive firmware.






Update: I have now made a new version of 1.02DE file that works with my new NS51 drive and tested with over twenty discs all working perfect.

Asmcom

The WH16NS40 I purchased back in February has a manufacturer date of October, 2018, and it came with firmware version 1.03. I didn't try ripping UHD Blu-rays with it because I assumed it wouldn't have worked as shipped from the manufacturor. So I flashed it to the DE edition of 1.02 using one of the easy ASUS flasher tools so it could be UHD friendly. The disk read issues you described sound like the same disk read issues I'm having. Are you saying I messed it up by using one of the easy ASUS flasher tools? Yesterday, I went to LG's website and loaded the latest factory firmware in it with their tool. Should I give up on this drive and purchase a new one? Or are there things I can keep trying on the one I got in February?

[Billycar11]

The WH16NS40 I purchased back in February has a manufacturer date of October, 2018, and it came with firmware version 1.03. I didn't try ripping UHD Blu-rays with it because I assumed it wouldn't have worked as shipped from the manufacturer. So I flashed it to the DE edition of 1.02 using one of the easy ASUS flasher tools so it could be UHD friendly. The disk read issues you described sound like the same disk read issues I'm having. Are you saying I messed it up by using one of the easy ASUS flasher tools? Yesterday, I went to LG's website and loaded the latest factory firmware in it with their tool. Should I give up on this drive and purchase a new one? Or are there things I can keep trying on the one I got in February?

no you didnt mess it up the drive is defective from the factory.

it has been know that some drives have extra calibration data lg and asus tools im sure account for this and even the dos flash data mover tool did it is a non issue.

i know how annoying getting defective drives is trust me i have gotten over 50 but you just need to use the warranty or get a new one. i recommend the BU40N.

[Chris Kelly]

The WH16NS40 I purchased back in February has a manufacturer date of October, 2018, and it came with firmware version 1.03. I didn't try ripping UHD Blu-rays with it because I assumed it wouldn't have worked as shipped from the manufacturer. So I flashed it to the DE edition of 1.02 using one of the easy ASUS flasher tools so it could be UHD friendly. The disk read issues you described sound like the same disk read issues I'm having. Are you saying I messed it up by using one of the easy ASUS flasher tools? Yesterday, I went to LG's website and loaded the latest factory firmware in it with their tool. Should I give up on this drive and purchase a new one? Or are there things I can keep trying on the one I got in February?

no you didnt mess it up the drive is defective from the factory.

it has been know that some drives have extra calibration data lg and asus tools im sure account for this and even the dos flash data mover tool did it is a non issue.

i know how annoying getting defective drives is trust me i have gotten over 50 but you just need to use the warranty or get a new one. i recommend the BU40N.

I explained my problem to LG and they said it was the software. So they won't even look at it.

[Billycar11]

I explained my problem to LG and they said it was the software. So they won't even look at it.

you dont tell lg all the details you say something like i get read errors on this drive but not on other drives with the same disc. boom done

[jonghotti]

I'm available tonight to help troubleshoot with anyone who is having issues flashing drive themselves. Check the link in my signature for contact info!