I have an LG WH16NS40 blu-ray drive that always works consistently plugged in via SATA, but I much prefer to plug in externally. To that end, I have attempted some cheapo Unitek adapter, and after that didn’t work consistently, an OWC Mercury Pro optical drive enclosure. Both are performing similarly:
The first disc or two rips fine when the adapter/enclosure is new. (I am using MakeMKV.)
Now when I put a disc in, the blu-ray drive’s lights flash a bit, disc spins up a bit, but after ~30 seconds it gives up. KDE does not identify the disc. MakeMKV also does not identify the disc.
Even leaving the drive unplugged and plugging it back in, it won’t identify drives anymore (even though it did initially). It still works fine over direct SATA.
If I run blkid or something like sginfo -a /dev/sr0, then those commands hang in the terminal and do not resolve until the drive is disconnected.
If I run lsof /dev/sr0 to identify what is using the drive, there is no output.
I’m left believing it’s the kernel or system rather than any applications that are getting hung up on the drive. Are there any likely solutions, or is it just probably the case that neither my cheap adapter nor my optical drive enclosure are supported by Linux? I thought it might be a power issue initially, but the OWC enclosure has a 3 amp power supply, which should be more than enough. Please let me know if there’s any relevant info I failed to provide. Here are some logs of the failure happening (I’m not sure why the log thinks it’s WH16NS60 since it’s actually WH16NS40):
[ 7372.210037] usb 4-1: new SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[ 7372.221530] usb 4-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1e91, idProduct=de2c, bcdDevice= 0.01
[ 7372.221534] usb 4-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1
[ 7372.221537] usb 4-1: Product: Mercury Pro Optical
[ 7372.221539] usb 4-1: Manufacturer: Other World Computing
[ 7372.221541] usb 4-1: SerialNumber: WP9C01625000
[ 7372.261330] usb-storage 4-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 7372.261489] scsi host6: usb-storage 4-1:1.0
[ 7372.261605] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[ 7372.265741] usbcore: registered new interface driver uas
[ 7373.300241] scsi 6:0:0:0: CD-ROM HL-DT-ST BD-RE WH16NS60 1.02 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[ 7373.400433] sr 6:0:0:0: Power-on or device reset occurred
[ 7373.460819] sr 6:0:0:0: [sr0] scsi3-mmc drive: 0x/48x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
[ 7373.460823] cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
[ 7373.508063] sr 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
[ 7373.508167] sr 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 5
[ 7433.387615] usb 4-1: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[ 7433.400165] sr 6:0:0:0: [sr0] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_TIME_OUT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK cmd_age=30s
[ 7433.400172] sr 6:0:0:0: [sr0] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 02 00
[ 7433.400175] I/O error, dev sr0, sector 4096 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x80700 phys_seg 1 prio class 2
Some vendors reuse USB ID’s. Check the sub-vendor and sub-device ID’s. It is possible that WH16NS60 fixed a bug in WH16NS40. Try searching on https://linux-hardware.org — there are often user comments with workarounds.
Have you tried contacting OWC’s support about their enclosure? They’re usually pretty good about things and they do claim Linux support for this enclosure. They may have some guidance on what might be happening.
For my laptop I chose to obtain an LG slim blueray drive powered by and using USB. Similar to this one
It works seamlessly for me on both my laptop and my desktop so other than the ancient bluray sata drive already in my desktop I have no need for an enclosure.
Sorry I cannot assist with the current problem, but my solution is smaller, more portable, and ‘just works’. (I use makeMKV as well).
These are all great ideas, thanks for all the responses! (I always get so many good ideas when I post here )
This website seems down for me currently. I’ll check back though.
Somehow I didn’t even consider this. I think this is my next step; I’ll reach out to them (probably tomorrow) and post back here with if I get a resolution.
I was having permissions issues editing atapi_an while my system was running, but I used a launch parameter of libata.atapi_an=1 to set that equal to 1. No luck, but thanks for the idea!
Honestly, I probably should use this for most of my discs and hook up my current one via direct SATA connection when I need to rip a 4k disc. (I’d gotten my current one specifically because it supports 4k, which that Amazon one doesn’t seem to, but honestly most of my discs aren’t 4k…) Thanks for mentioning that, if I can’t get mine working externally, I’ll pick this up.
I got linux-hardware to work, and I uploaded a probe, but it wasn’t obvious to me how this helps me. I’ll research more later on to see how I can leverage this website. I didn’t see any user comments for this particular device though.
OWC’s support finally got back to me yesterday. They suggested swapping out cables, using different USB ports, and making sure my drivers/BIOS are up to date. I have tried multiple USB ports, my drivers have been up to date, and I’ve just updated my BIOS—no change. It’s still working intermittently, but not with any reliability. I asked them to clarify which cables I should swap out (External power? External USB-A to USB-B? Internal SATA power? Internal SATA data?), so hopefully I’ll hear back from them on that point eventually. They did clarify that the product is officially supported on Linux.
I did find out that some of my media I’ll want to re-encode with ffmpeg, and that seems to get MUCH better results (both quality and speed) on my wife’s Windows 11 computer with Nvidia GPU rather than my Fedora computer with AMD GPU. Since I’ll be re-encoding things over there anyway, I might start just ripping things over there too. (I haven’t actually tested the drive on Windows yet to see if it’s more stable over there, but that will likely be my next step.)
The LHDB site, like many others, probably suffers from demands exceeding what their funding can afford. I did see your probe. It isn’t strictly necessary for checking if your device works for others, but makes it easier to find other probes with the same hardware components.
Not all USB ports on a given system will have the same specs. Some devices that use 2 USB connections (one for power) work better if they get power from a USB hub with its own power. Cables are too often overlooked as a source of problems. I keep a few high quality spares on hand.
Sorry I didn’t follow up for so long; OWC and I wrapped up our troubleshooting one week ago today. This will be my final update.
Working with OWC’s support, we determined that I was using all the right drivers, and at their request I tested it on the one Windows PC in my house and the enclosure worked just fine. OWC concluded “It likely has something to do with the built in drivers with the Linux version, though if I may come across anything I will pass it along.” I’ll just use the enclosure on the Windows computer as needed for now, and if I need one on Linux, I’ll get the one Jeff V suggested. I consider this matter closed (even if it doesn’t quite have a “Solution”).
Thank you all,
AlexioXela
Edit: Apologies, that was supposed to just be a general reply, not specifically to George N. White III. I guess I still need to get the hang of Discourse(?) a bit.
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