ASUS BW-12B1ST Issues

Pepi · 2013-09-13 14:26:24 UTC

I’ve tried to do research on this issue already and have done some troubleshooting.

Drive stops reading any discs, says “please insert disc”…

I’ve uninstalled the drive, rebooted, works fine but eventually stops working…usually with inserting a new disc.
I’ve changed SATA port on motherboard, Gigabyte z87x-ud3h and the issue still persists. The motherboard is a month old. Do I need to swap SATA cables also? I can’t imagine it’s a faulty SATA cable but I’ll give it a shot if this is the next step. I’d have to swap to another drive since I don’t have extras and I’m not about to go buy cables for troubleshooting.
I’ve done the asus to iHBS112-2 firmware swap upgrade as explained on this site. Firmware upgrade was successful to PL06

I can’t really think of any other troubleshooting I could do? The drive is about a year old and used infrequently.

If it’s toast, I can RMA it I suppose but if this is a s*** drive, I need to know what blu ray writer/reader is reliable these days etc…

Thanks in advance

Pepi · 2013-09-13 14:57:17 UTC

update: switched SATA cables, will update result.

Pepi · 2013-09-13 19:07:35 UTC

update 2: changing SATA cables didn’t make a difference. It must then be an issue with the optical drive and or firmware…not sure if there’s a way to troubleshoot this further and revive my drive?

cvs · 2013-09-14 08:20:40 UTC

Try a different SATA port, and most importantly, make sure that the drive is connected to a SATA port which explicitly supports optical drives (you can consult your mobo’s manual, but one of the native Intel ports should do just fine).

Avoid connecting the drive to non-Intel controllers or to any RAID controllers and make sure that the SATA port your drive is connected is set up in BIOS to operate either in AHCI or IDE mode.

Try updating the firmware of your mobo as well. New mobos sometimes have all sorts of weird bugs.

PS. iHBS112 drives (and their clones) are good and reliable drives, but even good products do sometimes fail… if nothing else works then it is possible that the drive has developed a fault. Perhaps also try the drive in a different computer in order to isolate any possible mobo or OS related issues.

Pepi · 2013-09-14 16:40:03 UTC

[QUOTE=cvs;2699808]Try a different SATA port, and most importantly, make sure that the drive is connected to a SATA port which explicitly supports optical drives (you can consult your mobo’s manual, but one of the native Intel ports should do just fine).

Avoid connecting the drive to non-Intel controllers or to any RAID controllers and make sure that the SATA port your drive is connected is set up in BIOS to operate either in AHCI or IDE mode.

Try updating the firmware of your mobo as well. New mobos sometimes have all sorts of weird bugs.

PS. iHBS112 drives (and their clones) are good and reliable drives, but even good products do sometimes fail… if nothing else works then it is possible that the drive has developed a fault. Perhaps also try the drive in a different computer in order to isolate any possible mobo or OS related issues.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the tips…I’ll try to do what you suggested although everything but trying it in another PC is up to date…I also just did a clean install and I thought the problem was fixed but I just tried a DVD and it’s back to it’s old habits.

Pepi · 2013-09-14 18:04:17 UTC

This honestly makes no sense to me. I can’t agree this is a hardware issue.

I did all possible hardware troubleshooting steps, except tossing it in another system since I don’t have the luxury to do so.

To me it seems impossible that the drive is dead when the behaviour is a constant pattern.

Once I uninstall the drive from devices, reboot, it reads the disc. If I take the disc out and try another, have to uninstall device again and reboot.

This has to be a software/firmware issue?

I have it updated to the latest PL06
SATA3 0-5 supported by intel z87 chipset. I am only using the first 4…I did try 5,6 also. Same behaviour

cvs · 2013-09-15 04:23:43 UTC

The most likely scenario is for a software issue related to the hardware configuration of your machine (hence why I suggested that you try it on another machine, or even on the same machine but via a SATA to USB adapter which supports optical drives).

Quick question: which SATA drivers are you using … The standard Microsoft ones or the Intel ones? I would suggest updating your chipset/storage drivers to the latest Intel ones. I had problems in the past with ODD drives not liking the MS drivers, which disappeared once I updated to the Intel ones.

If none of the above works, I don’t think you can exclude a hardware issue completely until you have tried the drive in another computer.

It is highly unlikely that this is a firmware issue. Firmware issues don’t just appear out of the blue. The only possibility here would be some sort of incompatibility with your chipset, but then the very same issue would happen to many others who use the same chipset or motherboard, which clearly doesn’t appear to be the case.

If there’s a BIOS update available for your mobo, then it would be a good idea to update it, unless you have a good reason not to do so (i.e. people complaining about it on various forums).

Pepi · 2013-09-15 06:02:28 UTC

Thanks again for the tips. I appreciate your efforts.

Please take a look at my sig. This is a new system, built a month ago (mobo/cpu/ram/psu/case). All drivers/bios etc were downloaded from gigabyte and are the latest for my motherboard.

In terms of intel SATA driver from gigabyte

Intel SATA Preinstall driver
(For AHCI / RAID Mode)
Note: Windows setup to read from USB thumb drive.

I’m not entirely sure which intel SATA driver to install to be honest. Seems I am using a imbeded version that comes with win7-64

cvs · 2013-09-15 06:34:17 UTC

[QUOTE=Pepi;2699961]Thanks again for the tips. I appreciate your efforts.

Please take a look at my sig. This is a new system, built a month ago (mobo/cpu/ram/psu/case). All drivers/bios etc were downloaded from gigabyte and are the latest for my motherboard.

In terms of intel SATA driver from gigabyte

Intel SATA Preinstall driver
(For AHCI / RAID Mode)
Note: Windows setup to read from USB thumb drive.

I’m not entirely sure which intel SATA driver to install to be honest. Seems I am using a imbeded version that comes with win7-64[/QUOTE]

Nice system

Try installing the latest Intel RST drivers (12.8.0.1016): https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Software+Products&ProductLine=Chipset+Software&ProductProduct=Intel®+Rapid+Storage+Technology+(Intel®+RST)&ProdId=2101&LineId=1090&FamilyId=42

Or use the online automatic driver detection utility: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Default.aspx?lang=eng

Pepi · 2013-09-15 08:40:22 UTC

I’ve been trying all my blu rays…reads every single one…no issues…I’m beginning to suspect that it’s the rome dvd’s (originals)…

I also tried some cdrw discs and original dvd’s in my collection…no issues…

Also, I don’t use RST, why would I need to install the driver? Might be a noob question but just trying to educate myself. Thanks.

cvs · 2013-09-15 09:28:03 UTC

[QUOTE=Pepi;2699999]I’ve been trying all my blu rays…reads every single one…no issues…I’m beginning to suspect that it’s the rome dvd’s (originals)…

I also tried some cdrw discs and original dvd’s in my collection…no issues…

Also, I don’t use RST, why would I need to install the driver? Might be a noob question but just trying to educate myself. Thanks.[/QUOTE]

If its working, then you can leave it as it is.

The RST driver pack contains both RAID and AHCI drivers. It looks at which type of driver you’ve got installed and installs the correct one (AHCI in your case) if an updated driver for your chipset is available inside that pack. It is a convenient way to update Intel AHCI drivers without updating the rest of chipset drivers. Alternatively if you want to update all chipset drivers (including AHCI) then you can download the latest chipset driver pack for your Z87 chipset and that will install/update all of them if/when necessary to do so.

Pepi · 2013-09-15 09:51:10 UTC

Ah, thanks…I did update the latest chipset driver so I’m sure it’s all in there. I appreciate you explaining this to me.

I just tried ROME season 2 discs…same issues LOL, so I think we can pretty much close this case and conclude that ROME original DVD’s are complete s***

What puzzles me is that once I put the ROME disc in and it doesn’t work, no other cd/dvd will work until I uninstall the device. It’s as if the ROME disc messes up the drive until I do the above…then all discs work fine until I use another ROME disc.

Now I have to see if Costco will give me a refund even without a purchase receipt since it was a while ago that I bought these but only decided to watch them recently.