I bought a LG GGW-H20L which is giving me some trouble. It plays and writes CDs and DVDs just fine, but when you try to access a HD disc either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray from Explorer it says the disc may be corrupt. I tried to burn the included BD-RE disc of just data files using both Power2Go which came with the drive and Ashampoo 7, but it just hung at 1%. When I open AnyDVD, it correctly identifies the disc either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, but errors when I try to rip it. DVDFab HD doesn't see the disc when inserted like normal. Was there something I overlooked when installing it? I just did the normal install, forgoing the InstantBurn because I dislike packet writing software. The specs of my pc are:

Model: HP A6109n
CPU: 2.0 GHz AMD Athlon x2 3800+
Memory: 2GB PC5300
GPU: Nvidia 8600GT
Operating System: Windows XP Pro SP3

Thanks for looking and any help greatly appreciated.

So far this mostly sounds pretty normal. Windows cannot read HD/BD discs, only supporting software can.

Please post what SATA controller is in use. From your system specs it looks like either Nvidia or VIA. Either of which could mean trouble for any SATA optical drive.

Thanks for the reply.

It says Nvidia MCP61 Serial ATA controller in device manager.

Im getting the same LG BD-R/HD-DVD-Rom drive as zazonz and from looking at my specs of my PC on my signature do you think my PC would have any conflicts with this drive? Does anyone think I will encounter any problems?

zazonz and coaxley, from the specs you both have an NVIDIA chipsets in the NorthBridge, you will most likely have problems with SATA optical drive (DVD or Blu-ray burners).

But you never know until you test it. If you have problems, a cheap solution is by getting a PCI to SATA controller with Silicon Image chipset, such as Syba SD-SATA-4P. This card has Silicon Image 3114 chipset which works great with SATA optical drives as well as harddrives.

DVDFab HD doesn't support HD discs correctly based on my experience and other users'. Just use AnyDVD until the author of DVDFab update the software.

thats not always the case, but if it says "MCP61 Serial ATA controller " he hasn't updated his drivers in ages.


latest driver is 5.10.2600.998

Wouldn't happen to know where I could find the latest version? I haven't had any issues with my current optical or hard drive. Thanks for the help so far.

I think some people do have success with some Nvidia controllers, given the controller is in non-RAID mode and has an appropriate driver installed. Unfortunately, theres a lot of variables and things to tinker with.

In the case of the OP, I'd start with testing out the drive for DVD and CD burning/reading and see if it also has issues with this.

The machine came with Vista which I downgraded to XP. Would it help with the SATA driver if I put Vista back on there?

Yeah my Hard Drive is SATA and I havent had any problems with it

it would help with UDF, vista has better support for UDF, no extra UDF software required.

it would help to know what chipset you actually have.

9.98 right now can only be found in latest nforce pack for 780i, but SATA driver is backwards compatible with all chipsets from nforce4, 5, 6 and 7 series.

CPU-Z says the Chipset is nVidia ID03EA. Maybe I'll just but the card. It's $20 on NewEgg. I hate to wait, but I'm loathe to go back to Vista.

SATA hard drive will work on all controllers without any issue whether it is Intel chipset, JMicron, nVidia, Silicon Image etc, but the problem is SATA optical drive (CD/DVD/Blu-ray/ HD DVD drive) will not work on all SATA controllers.

There are many SATA controller chipsets out there so it's difficult to track which works or compatible for SATA optical drive and which one does not. If the compatibility between optical drive and controller is severe, usually your system cannot recognize the SATA optical drive even in BIOS. If your system can recognize the drive, then you might want to do a simple test with Nero CDSpeed "Burst rate" whether it can deliver enough constant data transfer rate. For DVD drives, a burst rate of 22 MB/s is sufficient, however for Blu-ray/HD DVD drives including LG GGC/GGW-H20L we need higher bandwidth. I've seen burst rate up to 59 MB/s. The higher you get then you will not have issues in high speed reading/burning or high definition playback.

In addition to SATA controller chipset compatibility, we also need to take into account the firmware support itself.

I see 58-59 MB/sec with either DVD or HD-DVD discs on the SIL card. .

Yes the LG GGW-H20L and GGC-H20N can support around 59 MB/s burst rate on the SIL 3114 chipset, but the GGW-H10N only supports 39 MB/s on the same card so the drive itself (or the firmware) should also be considered.

I got the PCI SATA card from NewEgg today. It's working rather well.

Only rather well? not well enough?

Actually I got a new problem. I managed to rip a Blu-Ray disc using AnyDVD HD. It took about an hour or so. The resulting mts file does npt seem to have any souind in PowerDVD. I am assuming this is not right. Thanks for any help.

what movie? what sound stream?

The movie is Ghost Rider on Blu-Ray disc. I assumed incorrectly I think that the mts file had the sound as well.

I got no sound once in a while with PowerDVD Ultra. Nero Showtime works fine (with sound).