OWC Blu-ray burner in '09 Mac Pro

[wonderspark]

I just got an LG Blu-ray burner from OWC, this one HERE, and so far, so good. I forgot to get some blank media first, so I haven't tried a burn yet, but I noticed a noise. Every few minutes or so, I can hear the drive make a little noise, like it's looking for a disc or something. It's just a second or so, a little "clickity-click" that is not loud, but when the room is quiet, I notice it.

What is it doing, and is this normal? Anyone else with similar observations or knowledge?

 

[tomscott1988]

I just got an LG Blu-ray burner from OWC, this one HERE, and so far, so good. I forgot to get some blank media first, so I haven't tried a burn yet, but I noticed a noise. Every few minutes or so, I can hear the drive make a little noise, like it's looking for a disc or something. It's just a second or so, a little "clickity-click" that is not loud, but when the room is quiet, I notice it.

What is it doing, and is this normal? Anyone else with similar observations or knowledge?

I had the same thing, but with an LG dvd ram drive, searching for media every 3-4 mins. Check if your computer will sleep...

Mine didnt, i left mine on all the time, didnt realise as the screen sleeps and im not in the room all the time and a 1tb enterprise drive i had installed died, only 6 months old. Must have been spinning all the time.

The only way to make it sleep is to force it to. I got rid of the drive because frankly it was a pain in the a*s. I was looking to get a blu ray drive but if the same issue stands then i wont bother. Just check, set it to sleep after 5 mins and see if it does, if it doesnt id send it back and get your money back. Seen as tho mine was an LG its maybe an incompatibility with LG drives in general! hopefully this isnt the case for you!

 

[ovrlrd]

Will definitely keep an eye on this thread because I was considering buying one of these.

Hope other people can chime in and offer their own experiences.

 

[wonderspark]

Well, I don't know what changed, but it seems to have stopped making that occasional clicking / searching noise. I've had my system on for extended periods, with the monitors sleeping, etc. and the drive never disappears or does anything abnormal, as far as I can tell.

I successfully burned a BD-R (of some test footage of an HD movie I'm editing) on the first try, so that's good. I'd hate to waste $2.88 per disc trying to figure out problems, hahaha!

So, it seems all good now. Maybe it just had to settle into its new home, or... something. So far, I'm happy!

 

[snipper]

Sleeping problems with the LG Mac Pro combination

Very interesting topic, why didn't I find this before? I too have a BH10LS30 blu-ray burner in my Mac Pro. Often (but certainly not always) it won't sleep either. It makes the 'checking for disk' sound but although I'm easily annoyed by noises, this one is not that disturbing to me.

Now and then I have other problems with this machine. Software crashing while idling, memory that is not recognized any more, sometimes even a kernel panic. I seems far fetched that this is caused by this drive but I will test it by disconnecting the BH10LS30 drive for a while.

I will keep you posted.

I had the same thing, but with an LG dvd ram drive, searching for media every 3-4 mins. Check if your computer will sleep...

Mine didnt, i left mine on all the time, didnt realise as the screen sleeps and im not in the room all the time and a 1tb enterprise drive i had installed died, only 6 months old. Must have been spinning all the time.

The only way to make it sleep is to force it to.

Even that sometimes doesn't work (either by pulldown menu or the hardware button) with this Mac Pro 2008. I then have no choice but to shut it down.

Not claiming it's the blu-ray drive though.


BTW
There is a common misunderstanding about hard drives. Hard drives don't wear out from idly spinning constantly as much as they do from stopping and starting up again often. Hard drives fail all the time, one drive failing after 6 months doesn't proof anything. I have 4 hard drives in this Mac Pro and none of them failed. I have the BH10LS30 internally connected for almost a year now, Mac is on every day.

 

[scottsjack]

No problems so far with a WH10LS30 purchased from OWC in July. Mounted in my 2010 MP it's as quiet and well behaved as the original. Using Mac OS X it rips BR via MakeMKV and using Windows 7 it plays BR using the supplied software.

It doesn't get a lot of use but when I occasionally need it. I'm one of those old fashioned guys that expects computers to have optical drives. For less than one hundred bucks this LG has been excellent.

 

[wonderspark]

Hello!

In the time since I made the last post, I've never heard the drive seeking a disc, and no disc is inside the drive, so it just works normally now.

Also, I installed an 8-bay RAID tower, and never sleep my system. It runs about 16-24 hours a day (I'm a video editor, what can I say) and so far even the four original drives from Apple (640GB boot disk and 3x 1TB extra internal disks in RAID0 for scratch) are still 100% good to go, so drives staying awake for 23 months with a daily reboot or 8-hour shutdown seems not to be a problem, knock on wood!

 

[snipper]

Firmware

In an attempt to get rid of the disk seeking behavior, I tried to use the LG firmware update, but it doesn't work via Parallels Desktop. I also tried XP (no service pack) via Bootcamp but it didn't recognize the drive.

Now I have it disconnected and so far, sleeping mode hasn't failed, nor other functions, but of course it's too soon to tell now, whether it's solved.

 

[snipper]

System upgrade maybe?

Well, I don't know what changed, but it seems to have stopped making that occasional clicking / searching noise. I've had my system on for extended periods, with the monitors sleeping, etc. and the drive never disappears or does anything abnormal, as far as I can tell.

[…]Maybe it just had to settle into its new home, or... something. So far, I'm happy!

Did you by any change upgrade to OS X 10.6 'Snow Leopard' or OS X 10.7 'Lion' in the mean time?

 

[Nermal]

My LG drive (not from OWC) does the same thing in my home-built PC, and sleep works. I think it's just something odd about LG's drives.

 

[wonderspark]

Did you by any change upgrade to OS X 10.6 'Snow Leopard' or OS X 10.7 'Lion' in the mean time?

My system came with Snow Leopard 10.6.2, and I'm on 10.6.8 now, with NO plans to install Lion until absolutely necessary.

System Profiler has this to say:
- under Disc Burning -

HL-DT-ST BD-RE WH10LS30:
Firmware Revision: 1.00
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Generic Drive Support)
Profile Path: None
Cache: 4096 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -R DL, -RAM, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
BD-Write: -R, -RE
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO
Media: To show the available burn speeds, insert a disc and choose View > Refresh

- under Serial ATA -

HL-DT-ST BD-RE WH10LS30:
Model: HL-DT-ST BD-RE WH10LS30
Revision: 1.00
Serial Number: K98A5655832
Native Command Queuing: No
Detachable Drive: No
Power Off: No
Async Notification: Yes
Bay Name: Lower

Also, the standard Superdrive is in the top slot. Maybe this info helps?

 

[gglockner]

I can't speak about the sleep issue, but I definitely experience the periodic noise. After a lot of reading and testing, the only workaround that worked for me is to keep a disk in the Blu-Ray drive. A nuisance but I decided to live with it.

 

[snipper]

Update Mac Pro waking up problems

Meanwhile, I had the blu-ray burner disconnected for months and my Mac Pro problems stayed. I'm fairly sure they have nothing to do with the optical drive. I found out it's often the Mac Pro's power supply that's the problem.