What's the Best Internal Blu Ray Burner for Reading Scratched Discs?

[cpercival]

I'm pretty sure my Asus drive is starting to give up the ghost. It's beginning to show trouble with any disc that has even the smallest amount of damage. I get error messages in MakeMKV when I try to rip my Blu Rays that indicate trouble with reading the media. It's maybe 3 or 4 years old and has gotten quite a bit of use, so I figured I'd try a new drive.
My question is do Blu Ray drives differ in their ability to read damaged discs. I don't particularly care how fast it can read or write, I just want the most reliable drive I can find. If a read only drive works better for this, I'd consider it, but I'd like the ability to burn a disc if I need to. Are certain brands better than others? I occasionally hear that Pioneers and LG's might be superior, but I'm not sure in what way they excel.
Any advice on a solid reliable drive choice would be much appreciated.
Thanks

 

[drtweak]

Eh I don't think there is really any differerence. Some may use better lasers than other but I haven't come across a drive that can read a scrached disk better than the other.

Have you maybe tried to make an ISO of the disk then ripping it? I would do that when I ripped my blu-rays. It was faster in the long run. When you make an image of a disk is reads it from begging to end. No, where to go next. Then I either rip the ISO directly or mount the ISO then rip it. Then once done i just delete the ISO

 

[cpercival]

I guess that's what I wasn't sure about. I didn't know if some drives used better hardware and/or firmware that enabled them to better deal with small scratches. Any idea who is using better hardware?
I have not tried making an ISO first. I'm currently using MakeMKV to rip all my Blu Rays. I'm not sure it has the ability to make ISO's, but I haven't ever looked. What's good for ripping ISO's?

 

[drtweak]

I was a DVDFab person. Not sure if MakeMKV does ISO so I convert everything to MP4's

 

[cpercival]

I'll take a look tonight and report back. Thanks

 

[The Original Ralph]

i do a lot of ripping myself - my LG WH14NS40 burner has recently started doing the same, after less than a year of use, but i do do a lot of burning, probably 200+ BD and DVD discs, and a lot of ripping, approx 350 BD movie files) - but the odd thing is my backup LG laptop BD burner has read the BDs that the 5.25" one wouldn't, but read them extremely slowly - i use MakeMKV as well, and got a number of "corrupted data" msgs

what i couldn't understand was how my BD player in the entertainment system would read the BD fine - a video engineer over on the avsforums.com explained that they are more tolerant of deviations in the platter (ie scratches etc) while burners, by the nature of the beast have to be more exact.

a number of the members over there are video production engineers, either current or retired, and they seem to recommend the LG series internal BD burners, saying they replace theirs every 2 years whether they need it or not. At this point, i'd love to have gotten 2 years of use out of this one

 

[drtweak]

Yea mine is a LG from about 4 years ago. Within in the first year it stopped working and got it RMAed. Haven't had an issue with it now but then again I use disk maybe 2-4 times a year honestly. I just use the Digital Downloads when i get my movies now VS wasting time ripping disk lol

 

[The Original Ralph]

problem for me is i do a lot of ripping and don't want to have to RMA it but i guess i will - i only paid $45 for it shipped but i've only got one 5.25" bay in my computer - would like to make the next swap one that lasts a little longer