Recommended Drives for (Blu-ray) Recovery

[CartridgeUnit]

Hello,

I am working on trying to recover the video files from a few blu-ray discs for a friend using ddrescue. As MakeMKV fails to retrieve some video files. The thing is that these discs are of his wedding from over 10 years ago and the videography must have used some cheap blu-ray discs. As one appears to have delaminating issues and the other appears to have either a smaller delaminating issue or a slight crack/scratch (the latter disc might not be recoverable, but unsure). Are there any recommended blu-ray drives that could probably scan these better than my portable slim LG drive? I imagine I would be told that a Pioneer could do that job, but I unfortunately found out the hard way over the weekend that Pioneer is no more as of 2024/2025. So, is there a drive (or type of drive) on the market today that I could buy that would have better luck scanning these? Also, I do tend to rip (UHD) Blu-rays from time to time, so I would eventually use said drive for that after this project is done. I only have the one slim blu-ray drive rn anyway lol.

P.S. Also, anyone my friend knows who was given a copy of these wedding discs does not know where they are anymore. So, as far as I'm concerned, these are a one-of-a-kind so far.

[dcoke22]

If you're using ddrescue and there's a risk the disc might disintegrate in the drive, I wouldn't use a LibreDrive capable drive to do it. I wouldn't want the possibility of a million disc pieces floating around in my optical drive potentially damaging it.

Since the disc is a burned disc from a videographer, it probably doesn't have any encryption. I would guess any blu-ray capable drive could work.

Is the videographer still in business? Could your friend contact them and see if they still have a digital copy of their video?

[CartridgeUnit]

If you're using ddrescue and there's a risk the disc might disintegrate in the drive, I wouldn't use a LibreDrive capable drive to do it. I wouldn't want the possibility of a million disc pieces floating around in my optical drive potentially damaging it.

Since the disc is a burned disc from a videographer, it probably doesn't have any encryption. I would guess any blu-ray capable drive could work.

Is the videographer still in business? Could your friend contact them and see if they still have a digital copy of their video?

I'm not sure tbh. The one disc I'm giving more attention to has some slight delamination/bubbling. I have gotten some progress by rolling/pressing down with my fingers but it comes undone after a bit and then it struggles to read again (just seems like a blue vinyl-like material). Was wondering if maybe a different type of drive could read through the layer better/quicker.

[kaysee]

Use multiple desktop drive models. I recommend starting with an ASUS or an LG with ASUS firmware. This disables the LG jamless playback feature which produces bad data in error regions. LG portable/laptop drives do not have ASUS firmware available, and I have my doubts about how Pioneer laptop drives handle errors, with a BDR-TD05 confirmed to have produced junk data with no error signals with a damaged DVD.

In ddrescue, do only the first phase (fast copying), passes 1 and 2 (forward and reverse) only using the first drive. This will rapidly copy the good parts of the disc, which is typically most of it. Then put the disc in the second drive and do the same, which will copy some of the blocks that were skipped due to errors or slowness in the first round. I set the minimum speed requirement fairly high, so moderately slow parts of the disc are skipped in this phase.

After that, gradually move to the next phases (scrape, trim, and retry), alternating between the drives. These will take longer and longer.

Along the way, it is good to back up your image and map files, since a user error or surprise behavior by a drive could contaminate your rescued data which took a long time to create.

[CartridgeUnit]

Just for clarification, when you say to use a desktop drive, do you mean to use an internal drive? Or can it be an external drive that is just not a slim version? My PC does not have a spot for a 5.25in drive, unfortunately.