www.makemkv.com

Hi!

I would love a command line parameter to fix makemkv to a specific drive. So it does not try to scan for drives and to fiddle arround with another drive which might be ripping a disc currently. This is always a little anyoing for me.

Something like this:

$ makemkv -d /dev/sr0


That would be great!

Did you realize that you can have MakeMKV ask you which drive to attach to on start-up?

Start the program, use the wrench icon to enter setup, click on "IO", select "single drive mode". Save the configuration. Restart MakeMKV.

You will be asked whether to operate in all-drive or single drive mode, selecting which drive to tie this instance to. I have two drives, so I keep two copies running, one for each drive.

Wow, thanks!

I'm to used to calling a program with -h

Woodstock wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2026 3:06 pm Did you realize that you can have MakeMKV ask you which drive to attach to on start-up?

Start the program, use the wrench icon to enter setup, click on "IO", select "single drive mode". Save the configuration. Restart MakeMKV.

You will be asked whether to operate in all-drive or single drive mode, selecting which drive to tie this instance to. I have two drives, so I keep two copies running, one for each drive.

When I run the GUI in this mode ("Ask for single drive mode: [x]"), it thrashes a currently-ripping disc when you start a second instance of the GUI until it figures out what's in it... then it stops and lets you pick something.

So, if you're going to go this route, it seems best to open one instance of MakeMKV per drive and then tell each what to do... don't start a second instance for a second drive after you've started ripping the first.

An ideal augmentation would be something akin to what the OP described... a command-line switch for the GUI that would tell it which drive (or file, or folder) to target, or to target no drive at all. Populating the list of available drives may in and of itself cause things to thrash.

Maybe, though, an option to "Delay scanning until device is selected" would be a way to stop this, in conjunction with single drive mode.

That way, when the UI starts up, it doesn't try to populate the list of drives. It just sits there unobtrusively. If you point it at a drive, then it will do all of its usual device capabilities queries. If you point it at a file or folder, same deal... but it can scope those queries to only the target drive, leaving any 'active' rips (in other instances) unperturbed.