Question how is optical drive quality these days? WH16NS40/WH14NS40.

[Pc6777]

Im wondering about the quality of these drives these days and optical drives in general , just had one start to show problems after 40 days, but im getting a new one for free. but I ABUSED IT to be fair. burned well over a terbyte of data with it in a very short period of time, and ran intensive programs off the blu rays to make sure they burned fine, the motor was spinning around like crazy reading different parts of the disk to load the programs. and did some ripping. how are these models in 2020/2021? i have some spares im gona keep around for reading my backups, they will work fine in the future if I keep them in a cool dry place I assume? did these drives used to be manufacreted better or has quality stayed good?

 

[delaro]

Considering optical disk sales have massively declined in the last 3 years I don't think there has been a huge focus on plastic media or its equipment.

 

[Pc6777]

Considering optical disk sales have massively declined in the last 3 years I don't think there has been a huge focus on plastic media or its equipment.

really? I mean obviously I wouldn't run stuff on optical when i can use an hdd or ssd that's far superior in speed., but im surprised more people don't use them for archival with m-discs/high quality non organic dye blu rays.

 

[Jacozeelie]

We dont use them anymore. Back up everything on two diffrent hdd and store them somewhere safe. Or use some clouse account and store it there

 

[delaro]

I rarely use DVD/BluRays 🤷‍♂️ DVD's when I'm fiddling with an older PC/Laptop for OS installs and I don't have a USB 2.0 drive on hand. BluRay only when someone comes over and asks for a copy of something.

Backups?

Amazon Prime- Handles and pools all our photos
Microsoft OneDrive-Handles windows related things and some software settings
Google Drive- Handles Google stuff, documents, and other things I might need to share or give access to.
Pcloud- I was giving 2 TB of Lifetime storage in 2017 that covers music and random other stuff.

The rest is on a home media server and backed up weekly on a drive I have on my work server which is about 4TB.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Easily damaged optical media is not good for backups or archival in my opinion. For one they aren't robust to physical damage, but also data rot over time can be a concern. Also the relevance of optical media for backup makes little sense to me considering the disks are so small anymore relative to modern data sizes and you need so many disks.

My guess is quality is similar to what happened to cassette players. After they stopped being very popular mainstream, the quality on units started going down considerably.

For backup currently I use a nas using mechanical drives in my nas. If you have the ability to use sas drives, they are extremely cheap.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

LG BE16NU50

The absolute best optical (external) drive I have ever owned... picked it up like 4 years ago and it's amazing at burning all kinds of media. I don't use it for backups.. I use it because it allows me to rip digital uncompressed copies of my BD/UHD disc collection with MakeMKV for my personal library.

LG released a firmware update a while later that limited this functionality with UHD discs but going by the old "if it ain't broke don't fix it" I didn't update and the drive still works flawlessly. The drive is difficult to find now unfortunately.

 

[delaro]

LG BE16NU50
The drive is difficult to find now unfortunately.

That is because it was discontinued You may be able to find it as "Old Stock" since major retailers like BestBuy and Walmart have issues selling things as new when they haven't been in production for 5 years.

You can try looking for it here or other authorized retailers listed on the LG product page.
Shuee's furniture and Appliances

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

That is because it was discontinued

I knew that. Doesn't change the fact it's just as I said which is difficult to find... be it eBay or whatever.

 

[delaro]

I knew that. Doesn't change the fact it's just as I said which is difficult to find... be it eBay or whatever.

Because they don't fair well durability-wise as you just found out.

 

[Eximo]

Oddly enough, there will probably be a market for an archival grade optical reader in a decade or so. Probably will be LG making it too.

But they'll take all that optical media and convert it to whatever current storage medium. M-discs were a neat idea, just a little too late.

Where are my single use holographic crystals? Wasn't that supposed to happen by now?

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

Because they don't fair well durability-wise as you just found out.

You've lost me... mine has lasted 4+ years and is still working just fine... not sure what you're saying I found out about durability...

I merely suggested my drive as a quality drive (obviously) but it can be difficult to find.

 

[Pc6777]

Easily damaged optical media is not good for backups or archival in my opinion. For one they aren't robust to physical damage, but also data rot over time can be a concern. Also the relevance of optical media for backup makes little sense to me considering the disks are so small anymore relative to modern data sizes and you need so many disks.

My guess is quality is similar to what happened to cassette players. After they stopped being very popular mainstream, the quality on units started going down considerably.

For backup currently I use a nas using mechanical drives in my nas. If you have the ability to use sas drives, they are extremely cheap.

I use m-discs, they won't rot like normal dvds or whatever. and will keep them sealed away so they don't get damaged, the capacity on blu ray m discs goes up to 100 gigs, which is good for a disc. I hope they never completely stop making readers/writers. I doubt they will anytime soon tbh.

 

[Pc6777]

Oddly enough, there will probably be a market for an archival grade optical reader in a decade or so. Probably will be LG making it too.

But they'll take all that optical media and convert it to whatever current storage medium. M-discs were a neat idea, just a little too late.

Where are my single use holographic crystals? Wasn't that supposed to happen by now?

I use tons of m-discs, guess they never cought on with most people?

 

[Pc6777]

Oddly enough, there will probably be a market for an archival grade optical reader in a decade or so. Probably will be LG making it too.

But they'll take all that optical media and convert it to whatever current storage medium. M-discs were a neat idea, just a little too late.

Where are my single use holographic crystals? Wasn't that supposed to happen by now?

if they made archival blu rays larger and cheaper optical would make a comeback, they just cost so much, 100 gig m-disc bdxls are 10 a piece on a good day, if they were lets say 300 gigs it would be an easier pill to swallow.

 

[delaro]

You've lost me... mine has lasted 4+ years and is still working just fine... not sure what you're saying I found out about durability...

I merely suggested my drive as a quality drive (obviously) but it can be difficult to find.

Ebay and Whatever are used markets, if you can't find things like this on the used market there are only three reasons why.

1. They didn't last
2. They are far superior and nobody want's to get rid of them.
3. The supply never met the demand in the first place.

#3 Look at the Authorized dealer list and the rankings from the years sold. You don't find this unit in the top 10 which means that LG didn't flood the market and leave plenty of stock to resell once it was discontinued, this is the opposite of Samsung that tends to overproduce.

#2 Search for reviews across LG partners and resellers, you're not finding a huge amount compare that to top-selling drives of the same year(s) or even other drives from LG.

#1 Not being able to find them on the used market speaks for itself considering the seller market it had.

Regardless of the "Why" It's still a discontinued drive in an era where not many people still use Opticals.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

LG BE16NU50

The absolute best optical (external) drive I have ever owned... picked it up like 4 years ago and it's amazing at burning all kinds of media. I don't use it for backups.. I use it because it allows me to rip digital uncompressed copies of my BD/UHD disc collection with MakeMKV for my personal library.

LG released a firmware update a while later that limited this functionality with UHD discs but going by the old "if it ain't broke don't fix it" I didn't update and the drive still works flawlessly. The drive is difficult to find now unfortunately.

yeah, I love my LG optical

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

I use m-discs, they won't rot like normal dvds or whatever. and will keep them sealed away so they don't get damaged, the capacity on blu ray m discs goes up to 100 gigs, which is good for a disc. I hope they never completely stop making readers/writers. I doubt they will anytime soon tbh.

It will be a while before optical dies out... DVDs are still being produced and they've been obsolete for like 15 years.

yeah, I love my LG optical

Same here!

 

[Pc6777]

yeah, I love my LG optical

I just started using optical a lot, so im a bit late to all of this, I do have one older pioneer drive i got for free in a trade, but it cant read or write to my bdxls because its an 11 year old drive. and bdxls became a thing like 10 years ago.

 

[Pc6777]

It will be a while before optical dies out... DVDs are still being produced and they've been obsolete for like 15 years.




Same here!

blu ray will help keep optical alive hopefully, because the discs go up to 100 gigs so they actually have some use. I can store larger files/programs on them, the dvds not so much.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

blu ray will help keep optical alive hopefully, because the discs go up to 100 gigs so they actually have some use. I can store larger files/programs on them, the dvds not so much.

Movie discs will keep the format alive too... BD/UHD discs. The quality is better than streaming and there is a market for it... my collection is over 1000+ discs. A lot of people myself included would rather buy the discs and keep them on the shelf than buy a streaming copy with digital rights that are kept in the cloud that can be dropped at virtually any time.

 

[COLGeek]

Civility is required by all. Feel free to disagree, with facts/sources, but do NOT attack each other.

Thank you.

 

[carocuore]

really? I mean obviously I wouldn't run stuff on optical when i can use an hdd or ssd that's far superior in speed., but im surprised more people don't use them for archival with m-discs/high quality non organic dye blu rays.

Bluray discs are simply not worth it compared to a hard drive, same with M-disc, my ODDs (DVD only) have the M-DISC and SecurDisc logos on the tray yet I've never seen or used one, I do use the regular DVDs to burn old games, movies or copy some files but not special discs.



The quality depends on what drives you get, at least where I live there are tons of counterfeit drives that look legit but their quality is crap, those usually go for half the price of the legit ones and "just work" if you only use them for casual reading or burning, quality of the real drives is still good afaik.

 

[Pc6777]

Bluray discs are simply not worth it compared to a hard drive, same with M-disc, my ODDs (DVD only) have the M-DISC and SecurDisc logos on the tray yet I've never seen or used one, I do use the regular DVDs to burn old games, movies or copy some files but not special discs.



The quality depends on what drives you get, at least where I live there are tons of counterfeit drives that look legit but their quality is crap, those usually go for half the price of the legit ones and "just work" if you only use them for casual reading or burning, quality of the real drives is still good afaik.

I've been getting mine from good sources, like newedgg(not third part sellers, shipped and sold by Newegg) and from Amazon(not third party sellers)

 

[Pc6777]

Bluray discs are simply not worth it compared to a hard drive, same with M-disc, my ODDs (DVD only) have the M-DISC and SecurDisc logos on the tray yet I've never seen or used one, I do use the regular DVDs to burn old games, movies or copy some files but not special discs.



The quality depends on what drives you get, at least where I live there are tons of counterfeit drives that look legit but their quality is crap, those usually go for half the price of the legit ones and "just work" if you only use them for casual reading or burning, quality of the real drives is still good afaik.

I don't trust hard drives, but I will also use them to backup alongside my blu ray m discs. I'm not just backing up on discs lol, that would be a bit ridiculous, I'm using hdds and discs. I trust m discs over hard drives why day, plus if I forget about my archives for a few years, or

Movie discs will keep the format alive too... BD/UHD discs. The quality is better than streaming and there is a market for it... my collection is over 1000+ discs. A lot of people myself included would rather buy the discs and keep them on the shelf than buy a streaming copy with digital rights that are kept in the cloud that can be dropped at virtually any time.

but the ones you buy have crazy drm that's so insane you cant even play them on a normal sata computer burner and have to have the correct firmware to play them and all that stuff. idk why they are so hell bent on preventing piracy with drm when its obvious they can never kill movie piracy its just so easy and no matter what they do there will always be a way to pirate a movie, they just hurt paying costumers. I would be buying blu rays and giving the industry money if it wasnt for that ridiculous drm, but I cant play the movies in my computer because of software locks, even though my hardware is blu ray capable. im not buying a special player when i already have like 4 computer drives, I will just spend my time doing something else.