kamild_

I guess I got lucky with my first and only Pioneer. Thanks for the warning. Do you have any specific USB enclosures in mind that are proven to work well with such BD burners? Considering the one I have seems to struggle a little.

I've been using the BDR-S12XLT drive for recording Blu-Rays for about 2 years, and I've been very happy with the drive - regularly recording Verbatim BD-R and BD-R DL discs as well as occasionally Verbatim DVD-R DLs, not a single burn has failed, no issues of any kind so far. Basically a perfect drive for my use case. Unfortunately, it looks like I might be forced to part ways with it. Having upgraded my PC and having switched to an SFF form factor, I can no longer install this drive in my PC. I've been using it with this new PC via a SATA-USB 3 adapter with an external power supply, but it's not exactly reliable, occasionally not being detected by my PC. I've used it to record only 2 discs so far, but these detection issues make me worry I might eventually start getting my media destroyed by this solution. My only options are either a slim factor internal drive, or an external USB drive (any size factor in this case). From reading the forums, it seems like both kinds of these drives are widely considered to be problematic, but are there any outstanding drives worth recommending that might be as close to reliable as possible? My use case is just as before, mostly recording SL/DL Blu-Rays, sometimes recording DL DVDs, maybe eventually recording M-Discs. Pioneer does seem to have a decent collection of external drives, so how about something like a BDR-X13EBK or BDR-X13E-S? Or maybe one of their slim-size external drives? Looking forward to hear your experiences and advice on this topic.

Thanks for the advice, but shortly after creating this thread I found a nice deal on a new S12XLT for about 60 EUR, so I chose that one. Compared to my previous BH16NS40 - no issues so far, it's quieter, faster (the old drive often liked to stall the "closing disc" process for up to an hour) and hasn't failed to verify a single burn yet. Hopefully it remains that way for long.

I can see the NS60 on Amazon, but the price for it is insane (965 PLN, which stands for about $245) and unfortunately, NewEgg does not offer their services here. I've had another look at what my local shops offer, but outside of old LGs like mine, the BH16NS55 and a whole lot of ASUS and Pioneer drives, I don't see much more of a choice

To be honest, I don't think I'll be ever recording any DVD+RWs, just Blu-Rays and maybe M-Discs at this point. Poland

That's funny, the reason I was looking into Pioneer drives was because of your advice from 4 years ago... Did it really get this bad in the meantime? Right now I have the BH16NS40 and it's been causing me trouble for a long time, I'm guessing WH16NS40 is a different one? If it does not properly write to BD DL media, then that's a major disadvantage in my case. I've looked up the WH16NS60, but I cannot find it for purchase anywhere in my country.

I'm looking for a new BD-R writer (just for regular backups on multi-layer Blu-Rays and occasionally M-Discs) and as far as specs go, I found two devices that seem to satisfy my requirements - Pioneer BDR-S12XLT and Pioneer BDR-212EBK. But, looking at their specs on the Pioneer's website: https://pioneer-blurayodd.eu/products/bdr-s12xlt/index.php https://pioneer-blurayodd.eu/products/bdr-212ebk/index.php ...they seem to have exact same specs, except for a different front face design. The former also mentions "PureRead4+" and "RealTime PureRead", which I'm not sure what these are about. Is there any other difference about these?

It's almost as if all these patterns are seemingly random, yet unlikely enough for me to try and draw technically inexplicable conclusions from them... @dbminter, it's the same drive as before, the LG BH16NS40. As for the drives - from the Pioneers I only really see the BDR-S09XLT I mentioned years ago available here, is this the best bet when it comes to drives that fit my criteria (around-$100 price range, BD-R DL support)? From what I checked in online shops there are also: Asus BW-16D1HT (90DD0200-B30000) Asus BW-16D1HT (90DD0200-B20010) LG CH12NS40 (CH12NS40.AUAU10B) LG BH16NS55 and that's about it... Any out-standers here?

Let me dig out this thread real quick because I learned something interesting. I was recording some Blu-Ray discs for the past few weeks (using the same Verbatim media). I still haven't changed my drive since I couldn't find any of these Pioneer drives available for purchase in certain online shops or locally, and I certainly don't want to buy an used one... I've seen other recent drives but I could never find anyone on the internet who tried to use those with the Verbatim media I use, and I didn't want to risk it. Anyway, I burned 12 BD-R XL discs successfully and wasted 6 discs due to verification errors (same as earlier: "L-EC Uncorrectable Error" mixed with "Timeout" somewhere near the layer boundaries). For these discs I used the "Build" feature of ImgBurn to record some "loose" files from my hard drive straight to the disc. But then, I needed to clone 10 BD-R XL discs (which I haven't done in years, now that I think about it), so I used the "Read" feature to create ISOs of these discs, and used these images to burn second copies of these discs. Burned 10 successfully. 0 (zero) failed discs. I refuse to call this a fluke. Discs were from the same single 25-disc spindle/cake. If that means anything, I divided the job by making ISOs in one day, and burning them onto discs the next day (PC has rebooted at least once in the meantime) I'll be recording some "loose files" again soon, and instead of writing them directly as I described earlier I'm thinking about making ISOs with these files and using them instead just to see if it changes anything. I'll report back to you with results. What do you think? Could that mean anything?

Yea, looks like the drive is busted, I'm currently trying to record a DVD-DL disc with Windows's utility - 7 discs wasted in a row later, I think it might be an issue with neither the software, or the discs I'm using. Is there something "system-wide" I could check/try to see if it can get fixed before I throw the drive into the trash can? I've already tried reinstalling it. PS: The "Perform OPS before write" option didn't seem to make a difference.

After burning a few more Blu-Rays, it turns out the file size was indeed not a problem, since I've tried to burn the same set of data (which has burned successfully earlier), and the recording failed. Horrible balance today overall, out of 4 discs, 3 have failed the verification process (incl. 2 from a different box), all near the beginning of the second layer. I'm starting to doubt there would have been so many faulty blanks in these packages, and I'm about to blame the drive. Need some more testing before I do that though - maybe including testing with a different program... Until then - thank you Will post again if I test the drive for a bit more time.

Since the situation was quite urgent (but I also haven't had many spare discs, these aren't easy to buy locally around here either), I've tried burning yet another disc, this time slicing the huge file into 16GB chunks. Seems like this could have worked because the disc was burned successfully and verification process returned no errors. That, or the first disc I've tried to burn was defective... Anyway, thank you for your input, if this drive happens to cause any more consistent issues with burning DL discs, I may consider replacing it. You're recommending Pioneer, do you have any particular model in mind? Would BDR-209DBK work fine, or should I spent slightly more on a, say, BDR-S09XLT for example?

Two more things: doesn't seem like the entire file is unreadable after the 12219488 sector - thanks to the Sector Viewer, I found out only the sectors in the range of 12219488 - 12221823 are damaged, data after the last sector in that range is readable actually, while the file isn't 100% damaged, it actually seems to be broken in chunks - some sector ranges are readable, some others are not... after running the disc verification for a bit longer, yet another error started appearing: "L-EC Uncorrectable Error"; mixed with the "Timeout" message, I put the verification log in the spoiler below if that's any helpful.

First time trying to record a BD-R DL disc, and it seems like the disc failed to record properly. As seen in the log, the first bad sector is 12219488, which is apparently where the second layer starts. The disc I'm using is a Verbatim one (#43747), recording at the 6x speed, as advised on the box. The only setting I recall changing is the file system (UDF 2.50). I doubt it would be a poor quality disc, could it really be an issue with the drive? It's updated to the latest firmware version. The same drive was capable of recording single-layer Blu-ray discs just fine (although I didn't use ImgBurn for it). The problematic file is slightly over 40 GB in size. Do you think slicing the file into smaller bits would help? Or maybe changing some other setting in ImgBurn? Log (I redacted some paths and names, hopefully shouldn't be a problem): PS: The thread about problems with writing DL media seems to be talking about DVD's, not BD's. Is it exactly the same then (in terms of bad disc brands, for example)?