www.makemkv.com

sevoflurane wrote: Wed Nov 12, 2025 10:25 am ANother newbie here, though I am a long standing MakeMKV user and have been an avid ripper of CDs, DVDs of all types and SACDs for years. I have only one UHD BD, and am wondering if the following drive would be capable of ripping it so I can play the rip on my 4K TV.

Drive Information
OS device name: E:
Manufacturer: PIONEER
Product: BD-RW BDR-209M
Revision: 8.11
Serial number: redacted.
Firmware date: 2014-01-16
Bus encryption flags: 1B
Highest AACS version: 82

LibreDrive Information
Status: Enabled
Drive platform: RS8600
Firmware name: PIONEER BDR-209
Firmware type: Original (unpatched)
Firmware version: 8.11/ID52
DVD all regions: Yes
BD raw data read: Yes
BD raw metadata read: Yes
Unrestricted read speed: Yes

No disc inserted.

Note that the drive is in a Buffalo enclosure and was marketed at a BRXL 16U3. I have seen comments here stating that some Buffalo enclosures prevent flashing, and could remove the drive and rehouse it in the Icy Box enclosure that currently houses an older LG BD drive used for CD ripping.

I think the last time I flashed the firmware of an optical drive was over 20 years ago to make it region free, so I am somewhat out of practice. I will keep on reading the vast amount of information on this forum to educate myself further, but if anyone knows and has a quick answer it would be much appreciated!

sevoflurane wrote: Wed Nov 12, 2025 10:25 am I think the last time I flashed the firmware of an optical drive was over 20 years ago to make it region free, so I am somewhat out of practice. I will keep on reading the vast amount of information on this forum to educate myself further, but if anyone knows and has a quick answer it would be much appreciated!

Coopervid wrote: Wed Nov 12, 2025 4:14 pm

sevoflurane wrote: Wed Nov 12, 2025 10:25 am ANother newbie here, though I am a long standing MakeMKV user and have been an avid ripper of CDs, DVDs of all types and SACDs for years. I have only one UHD BD, and am wondering if the following drive would be capable of ripping it so I can play the rip on my 4K TV.

Drive Information
OS device name: E:
Manufacturer: PIONEER
Product: BD-RW BDR-209M
Revision: 8.11
Serial number: redacted.
Firmware date: 2014-01-16
Bus encryption flags: 1B
Highest AACS version: 82

LibreDrive Information
Status: Enabled
Drive platform: RS8600
Firmware name: PIONEER BDR-209
Firmware type: Original (unpatched)
Firmware version: 8.11/ID52
DVD all regions: Yes
BD raw data read: Yes
BD raw metadata read: Yes
Unrestricted read speed: Yes

No disc inserted.

Note that the drive is in a Buffalo enclosure and was marketed at a BRXL 16U3. I have seen comments here stating that some Buffalo enclosures prevent flashing, and could remove the drive and rehouse it in the Icy Box enclosure that currently houses an older LG BD drive used for CD ripping.

I think the last time I flashed the firmware of an optical drive was over 20 years ago to make it region free, so I am somewhat out of practice. I will keep on reading the vast amount of information on this forum to educate myself further, but if anyone knows and has a quick answer it would be much appreciated!

PM sent.

WackaYoshida wrote: Wed Nov 12, 2025 4:45 pm

sevoflurane wrote: Wed Nov 12, 2025 10:25 am I think the last time I flashed the firmware of an optical drive was over 20 years ago to make it region free, so I am somewhat out of practice. I will keep on reading the vast amount of information on this forum to educate myself further, but if anyone knows and has a quick answer it would be much appreciated!

I'm very much in the same boat. If anyone's willing to assist me on this, do let me know. Here's some info on my drive:

Drive Information
OS device name: F:
Current profile: BD-ROM
Manufacturer: HL-DT-ST
Product: BD-RE BP71N
Revision: 1.01
Serial number: SIK01L3MC2102
Firmware date: 2120-09-07 11:43
Bus encryption flags: 1F
Highest AACS version: 82

LibreDrive Information
Status: Possible (with patched firmware)
Drive platform: MT1959
Harware support: Yes
Firmware support: No
Firmware type: Original (patched version available)
Firmware version: 1.01
DVD all regions: Possible (with patched firmware)
BD raw data read: Possible (with patched firmware)
BD raw metadata read: Possible (with patched firmware)
Unrestricted read speed: Possible (with patched firmware)

MartyMcNuts wrote: Thu Nov 13, 2025 1:23 am

MartyMcNuts wrote: Thu Nov 13, 2025 1:23 am

WackaYoshida wrote: Thu Nov 13, 2025 1:57 am

MartyMcNuts wrote: Thu Nov 13, 2025 1:23 am

If this is a slim drive (Buffalo maybe?) it would be a LG BU40N.

MartyMcNuts wrote: Thu Nov 13, 2025 1:23 am

TheBesto wrote: Sun Nov 09, 2025 5:55 pm Hey guys!
I'm starting to look into saving my physical blu-ray collection into a digital one in order to avoid potentially losing them in the future.
As one can notice, I ended here (coming from the LTT video from a bit more than a year ago).

As a software engineer, I'm trying to understand what's behind the scene regarding all the steps that are linked in the tutorial on first page.
I do understand the need for a drive that can read Blu-Rays (duh), but then I fall a bit short on what the flashing step is supposed to be for.
Can someone explains a bit what it does? Is it to enable 4K HDR support on drives that does not have it? Is it to enable reading protected blu-rays as if they were not? Both, something else?

Also, it seems that, at least in France, most of the drives referenced in the tutorial are not available anymore to purchase.
The only exception is the Buffalo BRUHD-PU3-BK which I do find on Amazon, but it is quite expensive.
Do you have any recommandation there? It seems that the Asmcom website that would deliver pre-flashed drives is not available at the time (getting connection errors when trying to go there).

Thanks in advance

skywinder21 wrote: Sun Nov 16, 2025 4:52 pm Hey guys, I'm working on getting a Buffalo housed BRXL-16U3 reading UHD disks.

Looks like it's a fully repackaged Pioneed BDR-209M running BDR-212T firmware.

Drive Information
OS device name: \Device\CdRom0
Current profile: BD-ROM
Manufacturer: PIONEER
Product: BD-RW BDR-209M
Revision: 8.53
Serial number:
Firmware date: 2019-03-07
Bus encryption flags: 1B
Highest AACS version: 77

LibreDrive Information
Status: Enabled
Drive platform: RS8F00
Firmware name: PIONEER BDR-212T
Firmware type: Original (unpatched)
Firmware version: 8.53/ID52
DVD all regions: Yes
BD raw data read: Yes
BD raw metadata read: Yes
Unrestricted read speed: Yes

What do I need to do to flash it for UHD?

Thanks in advance!

xunil76 wrote: Sun Nov 16, 2025 6:32 pm Getting an error when trying to run SDFtool Flasher that says "ERROR: MakeMKV installation not found. Please install MakeMKV."

Thing is, I have MakeMKV v1.18.2 installed and registered

Coopervid wrote: Sun Nov 16, 2025 6:40 pm

xunil76 wrote: Sun Nov 16, 2025 6:32 pm Getting an error when trying to run SDFtool Flasher that says "ERROR: MakeMKV installation not found. Please install MakeMKV."

Thing is, I have MakeMKV v1.18.2 installed and registered

Probably in a non-default location. So copy SDFTool Flasher to that location. You can find it in "View" "Preferences" "General" when you run Makemkv. You made it difficult in the first place yourself.

xunil76 wrote: Sun Nov 16, 2025 7:49 pm

Coopervid wrote: Sun Nov 16, 2025 6:40 pm

xunil76 wrote: Sun Nov 16, 2025 6:32 pm Getting an error when trying to run SDFtool Flasher that says "ERROR: MakeMKV installation not found. Please install MakeMKV."

Thing is, I have MakeMKV v1.18.2 installed and registered

Probably in a non-default location. So copy SDFTool Flasher to that location. You can find it in "View" "Preferences" "General" when you run Makemkv. You made it difficult in the first place yourself.

There are perfectly valid reasons for not installing things into the default installation directory, which is why the vast majority of program installers give you that option in the first place (MakeMKV included, mind you). I never use the default C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86) locations for installing anything, except for those select few things which don't give me any option to change the installation directory (which irks me to no end).

I have a C: partition that is literally for Windows and Windows only, then a D: partition where I install everything else. This is because starting at least with Windows Vista (if not earlier), Windows has an extremely annoying tendency over time to fill up whatever free space is available on C: (I'm looking at YOU, C:\Windows\WinSxS), and installing everything else onto a separate partition prevents me from ever even being able to use up all of that space on C: with my installed apps/games, which would prevent (and has in the past prevented) Windows Updates & the like from being able to complete. I even move the Windows page file onto another partition so that is not eating up space on C:.

That said, I tried copying SDFtool Flasher directly into the root MakeMKV installation folder, as well as "...\MakeMKV\Data" (which is what the Preferences you mentioned show as the data directory), and it still doesn't work in either case.

What did work, however, was creating a Symbolic Link from my existing MakeMKV installation directory on D: into the C:\Program Files (x86) folder...so anyone else running into this issue now knows how to workaround without resorting to completely uninstalling MakeMKV and reinstalling it into the default location. Hope that helps at least a few people out there.

Seems to me that there should be an option when coming across this error to manually point the SDFtool Flasher to the MakeMKV EXE file if it can't find it on its own; that would be a much more elegant solution to the problem for those like myself who prefer not to use the default installation path.

Perhaps this could be a feature request for a future update to the tool? Admittedly I'm not a coder myself, but I really doubt that would be very difficult to achieve.