To LiberDrive or not to LibreDrive

[SubnetMask]

I have an Asus BW-16D1HT that unlike the BW-12B1ST it replaced, has LibeDrive firmware available for it. My question is are there any drawbacks to flashing it with LibreDrive firmware? The main reason I got this particular drive was to burn archival M-Discs of my most important data (all of my photography), as normal recordable media starts to degrade more or less right away and by the time it's 10 years old, you'll be lucky if it's readable, but the testing on M-Discs indicates they should remain readable for several lifetimes at minimum, and I don't want to compromise that functionality. Is the LibreDrive firmware exactly like the stock except for certain bits that pertain to ripping discs, or would it be best to avoid LibreDrive firmware for this particular drive?

[SamuriHL]

You're not flashing a "LibreDrive firmware". You're flashing a modified stock firmware that has parts that make it compatible with LibreDrive restored. That's it. The only difference.

[mike admin]

Is the LibreDrive firmware exactly like the stock

As said above, yes. The difference between stock and MK is really about 100 bytes - only to re-enable ability to upload custom code to the drive. When you turn your drive on, until you run MakeMKV on this drive, the MK firmware is identical to the stock one. The moment you turn off your drive, whatever MakeMKV was doing to your drive is gone.

Safety first

Please see viewtopic.php?f=19&t=19113#p71880 for details.

[SubnetMask]

Great to know - thanks for the info.