Help determining if my issues are the drives or my discs?

[Fletch.F.Fletch]

Earlier this year, I got a LGBP50NB40 (for further reference in this post, we'll call this drive 1) drive to start ripping my blu-rays for my Plex server. The drive served me well for over 400 rips of blu-rays and DVDs. However, over the last couple of weeks, it's started to have some flaky behavior where it either just flat out refuses to read discs and spits them out or attempts to read the disc and makes noise like it is, but then spits it out. Due to this behavior, I picked up an Archgon MD-8107-U3 which appears to be a rebadged LG BU40N (calling this drive 2). I have a small stack of blu-rays (13 or so) that simply will not work with drive 1. So far, drive 2 has been equally unsuccessful in ripping these discs. For example, I have the Coppola restoration of the Godfather on blu-ray. Disc 2 (GF2) ripped perfectly on the first try. Disc 1 (GF1) took about 3 tries before it ripped successfully. For Disc 3 (GF3), it gets about half way finished before it fails. I have tried this rip on two Macs (an iMac M4 and a 2018 Mac mini) and one Windows laptop. On the Macs, I get an OS X IPC Error which from what I read is "The IPC error happens when operating system (Mac OS X) suddenly "looses" the Blu-ray drive. Most of the time this happens with external USB drives and is caused by inadequate USB power. Please try using a powered USB enclosure (or powered USB hub) and short USB cables." On the Windows side, I get screens of "Medium Error-EC-Uncorrectable Error" or "Status_Service_Data Error."

To see if my Mac issues could be resolved, I bought a powered USB hub to to run the drive through that to see if that would fix the issue and it has not. I have not yet tried the powered hub on the Windows laptop but I doubt that it would make a difference since the Mac issues are the same with or without the hub. Just to confirm there wasn't perhaps another issue with Drive 2, I tried ripping another disc that worked on Drive 1 and it ripped perfectly with Drive 2. I then tried a different title that gives me problems (other than the Godfather disc) on drive 2 and while this got further than drive 1's progress, the rip still ended up failing. I've attached the screen shot of the output from this rip to see if there's something I am missing in trying to troubleshoot this.

All these discs are appear "perfect" on the underside and I should note play perfectly fine on my Blu-ray player.

One other observation, drive 1 continuously makes noise as if it is struggling to read the disc before it fails. Before the rip fails on drive 2, it seems to stop reading the disc and then will attempt to read it maybe every 30 seconds or so for a few times before it finally fails the rip. Is this normal behavior for drive 2 or is it possible that drive 2 is defective as well?

[MartyMcNuts]

Earlier this year, I got a LGBP50NB40 (for further reference in this post, we'll call this drive 1) drive to start ripping my blu-rays for my Plex server. The drive served me well for over 400 rips of blu-rays and DVDs. However, over the last couple of weeks, it's started to have some flaky behavior where it either just flat out refuses to read discs and spits them out or attempts to read the disc and makes noise like it is, but then spits it out. Due to this behavior, I picked up an Archgon MD-8107-U3 which appears to be a rebadged LG BU40N (calling this drive 2). I have a small stack of blu-rays (13 or so) that simply will not work with drive 1. So far, drive 2 has been equally unsuccessful in ripping these discs. For example, I have the Coppola restoration of the Godfather on blu-ray. Disc 2 (GF2) ripped perfectly on the first try. Disc 1 (GF1) took about 3 tries before it ripped successfully. For Disc 3 (GF3), it gets about half way finished before it fails. I have tried this rip on two Macs (an iMac M4 and a 2018 Mac mini) and one Windows laptop. On the Macs, I get an OS X IPC Error which from what I read is "The IPC error happens when operating system (Mac OS X) suddenly "looses" the Blu-ray drive. Most of the time this happens with external USB drives and is caused by inadequate USB power. Please try using a powered USB enclosure (or powered USB hub) and short USB cables." On the Windows side, I get screens of "Medium Error-EC-Uncorrectable Error" or "Status_Service_Data Error."

To see if my Mac issues could be resolved, I bought a powered USB hub to to run the drive through that to see if that would fix the issue and it has not. I have not yet tried the powered hub on the Windows laptop but I doubt that it would make a difference since the Mac issues are the same with or without the hub. Just to confirm there wasn't perhaps another issue with Drive 2, I tried ripping another disc that worked on Drive 1 and it ripped perfectly with Drive 2. I then tried a different title that gives me problems (other than the Godfather disc) on drive 2 and while this got further than drive 1's progress, the rip still ended up failing. I've attached the screen shot of the output from this rip to see if there's something I am missing in trying to troubleshoot this.

All these discs are appear "perfect" on the underside and I should note play perfectly fine on my Blu-ray player.

One other observation, drive 1 continuously makes noise as if it is struggling to read the disc before it fails. Before the rip fails on drive 2, it seems to stop reading the disc and then will attempt to read it maybe every 30 seconds or so for a few times before it finally fails the rip. Is this normal behavior for drive 2 or is it possible that drive 2 is defective as well?

Not to state the obvious but have you actually tried cleaning the discs?? Even if they look pristine, if they won't rip, give'em a good clean! Also, power cycling the drive is a good idea whenever rips start to fail. Those LG drive's are not very good quality and are often toast within a year.

[Fletch.F.Fletch]

Yes. I clean all the discs prior to using Makemkv.