On Saturday, I received the LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray Writer Drive. This is my 3rd Blu-Ray writer and it will replace my LiteOn iHBS112 which was causing several bad burns. The other drive is the Panasonic UJ-260, which is a slim drive that burns discs successfully.
This drive is one of the cheapest Blu-Ray XL writers available on Amazon. It is also able to read and burn CDs and DVDs.
Here, we will see the drive unboxed and teared down.
Unboxing
The drive came in this simple box:
There’s no branding. Just a box with the part number printed on a label.
Opening the box we see the drive:
Just the drive. No cables or software are included.
The drive is protected in bubble wrap:
Also also comes inside a plastic bag:
Taking it off we see the drive itself:
Now, let’s take a look at the top, where we will find some useful information:
The drive is the WH14NS40, with SVC code NS50. It was manufactured on January 2020 and comes with firmware 1.04:
Finally, this is the drive with the tray opened:
Teardown
We will begin the teardown by removing the 4 screws on the bottom:
We can then remove the bottom cover:
Let’s take a closer look at the drive chipset:
It is using a MediaTek MT1959HWDN chip.
Let’s now see the Eject Button, LED and Tray Motor board:
A look at the bottom tray mechanism:
The internal tray loading mechanism and Optical Pickup Unit:
A closer look to the Optical Pickup Unit:
And finally, here’s how the drive looks in my Desktop PC:
Drive Summary
This Blu-Ray writer can be crossflashed to the WH16NS60 16x variant. In fact, that was the first thing I did.
The drive is identified as HL-DS-ST BD-RW WH16NS60.
Here is the drive capabilities according to ImgBurn:
So far, I was able to successfully burn a BD-R with media code RITEK-BR2-00 and a BD-R DL with media code RITEK-DR3-000. Both discs were burned with ImgBurn and verified successfully.
Look forward as I test Blu-Ray media with this drive!
In the past few days, I brought a LiteOn iHAS524 C DVD drive on eBay. This drive is quite rare and was being sold as used, but the unit seems to be in good conditions.
The reason to have this drive is due to its unique LabelTag feature. This allows you to create labels on the data side of a CD-R and DVD+/-R. It, of course, will consume space, but the advantage is that you don’t have to manually label the discs as long as there is enough storage. It can also be created as soon as the data is burned given you use Nero Express with the LabelTag software present.
I also currently have the LiteOn iHAS524 A, which had its optical pickup unit replaced with the one used in the B revision. They are compatible with the A units and have been working great. However, the C unit laser is NOT compatible with the A unit, and I guess the same is true with the B units.
Here, I’ll present you with a side by side comparison of the internals as well as its exterior photos.
LiteOn iHAS524 C External Photos
We start with the front of the drive:
As is usual with DVD drives, you get to see the CD and DVD logos; and because this drive also features LabelTag, it has the logo in the front too.
Here is a closer look at the top:
And the back:
This C unit was manufactured on August 2012.
LiteOn iHAS524 A Exterior Photos
Now, let’s take a look at the exterior photos of the iHAS524 A. This drive has been with me since its release in 2010, so it doesn’t have the same condition as the iHAS524 C:
Again, we see the CD, DVD, and LabelTag logos.
Here is the top:
And the bottom of the drive:
It has a missing screw which I lost some time ago when I replaced the drive optical pickup unit. This drive was manufactured on June 2010.
Side-by-side internals
Here, we will see the internals side by side. We will start with the top cover interior:
Now, a look at the drive’s inside:
Both drives looks almost identical, with a few diferences.
This is the iHAS524 B Optical Pickup Unit. The part number is SF-DS1XD. It is compatible with the LiteOn iHAS524 A and is the one it’s using.
And here’s the iHAS524 C Optical Pickup Unit:
The part number is SF-DS1X1. It doesn’t have the small potentiometer on the lower left. Other than that, it looks almost the same.
The back also looks similar. The board from the A model is a bit bigger than the C model.
Here, we see both drives internals with the disc tray opened, giving us a better look at the reader mechanisms.
Unfortunately, the iHAS524 C Optical Pickup Unit is not compatible with the iHAS524 A. The drive refused to turn on, but it seems that what really happened was that there was a short circuit. This caused the ribbon cable to burn:
The iHAS524 A didn’t suffer any damage other than the burned ribbon cable. The SF-DS1X1 laser didn’t get damaged and the iHAS524C was able to work fine. After I made sure it worked, I placed its ribbon cable to the iHAS524 A and it started working with the SF-DS1XD OPU again. Phew!
Long story short, the SF-DS1X1 OPU is not compatible with the iHAS524 A. Use the SF-DS19L (The one that should be used in the A revision) or the SF-DS1XD (For B units, but also works with the A units).
This is the SF-DS19L Optical Pickup Unit which I replaced with the SF-DS1XD:
If you need one of these Optical Pickup Units, you can find them on AliExpress.
Today, I burned a few more Ritek Mini CD-R media, where I found out they have a surface issue:
I didn’t realized this, but it seems to be a plant manufacture problem. I opened another of the 100-pack I have and it have the same problem.
The problem is that the data was burning fine, with no errors on my Lite-On iHAS524, but it failed to verify on some parts of the disk, as it was approaching the end. I was burning them at 24x, the maximum speed it supports on the writer.
I decided to use the Optiarc AD-7561A drive I have to see if it would burn fine with it, since slim drives usually burns at a lower speed.
Optiarc AD-7561A
When the CD is inserted in this drive, it is detected as a 10x media:
I burned the CD with this drive, where it was able to both burn and verify successfully. It also seems that the drive burned surface is a bit darker than with the LiteOn drive, so maybe that makes it handle the bad surface better.
Quality tests
I burned 2 CD’s with the Lite-On drive where both burned successfully but didn’t read fine. One was able to read completely, but lowering the read speed at the bad section. The other one failed with unrecoverable errors.
Let’s see their quality tests with the LiteOn drive first, followed with the Optiarc drive:
CD #1 – LiteOn
This is the CD that was able to read completely but lowers the speed. When playing it back, it pauses while reading the wrong area. It can be ripped, but will struggle in the bad area. The ripped file appears to be fine, but EAC reports timing problems. Listening to the track didn’t revealed any issues.
You can see the excesive amounts of C1 and C2 errors.
CD #2 – Optiarc
Here is another burn of the same data, burned with the Optiarc drive and tested on the LiteOn drive. You can see that it only reports a maximum of 10 C1 errors and no C2 errors. The quality score is 99%. Same media, but burned on a different drive, at 10x speed.
CD #3 – LiteOn
This CD failed to test properly. Once again, you can see the excessive amounts of C1 and C2 errors. The positions of the C1 and C2 errors seem to match the ones of the previous LiteOn burn.
CD #4 – Optiarc
Here is another burn of the same data of the previous burn. You can see this time it was successful, with only a maximum of 8 C1 errors and a total of 19. Again, the quality score is 99%, which is the same as the other Optiarc-burned media.
Conclusion
As seen from the above tests, it seems the Optiarc AD-7561A drive can successfully burn these discs if we intend to use all of its capacity. Maybe it is because of the slower burning speed, or because the optical laser can burn them better than the one on the LiteOn drive.
The LiteOn drive can only burn these CDs at 16x and 24x, while the Optiarc can only burn them at 10x. I’ll test burning a disc at 16x at a later time and see if it works. If not, I’ll continue using the Optiarc drive, which has proven to burn them correctly and without any issues.
Yesterday, I received some Pocket/Mini CD-R I purchased on eBay, which were being sold for cheap due to them not being branded or not having their specs listed.
The seller was selling 3 packs of 100 unbranded silver surface Mini CD-R, and since the price was lower compared to other branded media, I decided to buy all 3.
The discs were wrapped with no spindle.
The discs have a silver surface:
Here we can see a single CD-R:
They have the usual light green color on the data side.
The disc loaded fine on my LiteOn iHAS524 drive. I launched ImgBurn which says that the discs are made by Ritek. Their media ID is 97m15s17f:
They also have a capacity of 210MB or 24 minutes and a maximum write speed of 24x.
This is the first Mini CD I use with this LiteOn drive, which has the unique LabelTag feature to add labels to the data side. The software detected the disc and a label can be created:
I burned some of these CD-R with Nero Express, which allows the creation of the label on the same run. I also burned them at its maximum speed of 24x without any failure.
Quality tests
I ran a Disc Quality test using Nero DiscSpeed. Below you can see the results of those tests. I limited the test to the first session of it, as the second one is the label produced with the above software and contains unreadable data. This makes the test fail. By limiting it to the first session, we can get the actual data track quality.
Disc 1
The first test gave us a maximum of 14 C1 errors with a total of 58. The average was 0.11. There were no C2 errors reported. The Quality Score was 98%.
Disc 2
This test was perfect! No C1 or C2 errors were reported, making the Quality Score be 100%.
Disc 3
This disc had a maximum of 9 for the C1 Errors with a total of 13. The average was 0.07. No C2 errors were reported. The Quality Score was 99%.
Disc 4
This final disc I burned had a maximum of 13 C1 errors with a total of 27. No C2 errors were reported. The Quality Score was 98%.
Final Thoughts
These blank CD-R media seems to be good to write small amounts of data. This could be an MP3 album, some photos, or software you’d like to archive. The burns seem to be of good quality and the 24x burning speed is adequate. This sure was a great find on eBay!
This is a slim external CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo drive that can read and write CDs but can only read DVDs.
Let’s begin with the teardown.
First, we must remove 2 screws that are found on the back to open the drive enclosure:
We can then open the enclosure:
We can see the DVD drive along with the board and USB Cable. We can also see that it seems that the USB cable is not actually soldered to the board.
Removing the DVD drive from the enclosure, we can see that the cable is in fact a Mini USB cable. This means the cable is not an actual USB 3.0 cable:
The fact that the cable is not soldered to the board is good news for us since we could replace it if the original cable goes bad or we want to use another cable.
On the back of the drive, we can take a closer look at the USB board:
Taking it off reveals a nice surprise:
The board is a USB to PATA/IDE adapter. This is interesting and somewhat makes sense, since the drive is just a CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive, and back in the days, we could see tons of CD writers for laptops. It uses the Initio INIC-1511 IC.
Here, we can see the PATA/IDE conector of the drive:
I decided to take off the sticker that it has on the top, revealing something more:
The included TEAC DW-224E-C drive was manufactured in November 2005. This could mean they are recycling old DVD drives or using refurbished drives. If this is true, this is good news for the environment, since they are repurposing drives that are in working conditions.
Here, I have the original drive connected to my computer without the enclosure:
Because the drive is basically an internal drive on an IDE to USB enclosure, we should be able to use it with other drives. I tested it with an old Optiarc AD-7561A drive. This drive is a CD/DVD writer with Lightscribe technology, which I haven’t used it for years:
When I connected the drive to the board, and to the computer, it recognized it without any issues:
And here we can see its capabilities as reported by ImgBurn:
The Optiarc drive still works after a lot of years of not using it. This also means that we should be able to use other PATA/IDE drives with this particular USB board and exchange the original drive if it ever goes bad.
That’s basically it for this teardown. If you’re interested in getting this CD-RW/DVD drive, you can get it on Amazon here.
Today, I’m sharing my unboxing video of the MagaBolt MagX Magnetic USB-C Cable which was a campaign that ran on Kickstarter.
This is a Magnetic USB-C cable that resembles Apple’s MagSafe connector. It is compatible with all USB-C devices, so you can use this cable to charge your phone, for instance.
Watch the video below to see how the cable looks:
Unboxing the BaseUs USB-C Hub for Phones (NuDock on Kickstarter)
I uploaded a new video to my YouTube channel. This time, I present you the BaseUs USB-C Hub, also called NuDock when it ran on Kickstarter. The final product turned out to be this BaseUs USB-C Hub, with identical features to the Kickstarter project.
The project creator told us that because NuDock was already being used, they had to rename the dock to BaseUs.
Watch the unboxing video below:
Fixing the Orange LED of the Tempotec Sonata iDSD Plus
I have found a solution for when my Tempotec iDSD Plus gets the Orange LED.
The solution is fairly easy. I believe that something may not be making good contact with the printed circuit board and may be preventing the DAC from working. However, slightly pushing around the SmartAction SA2000 chip, it seems to make the LED change back to green and allow the unit to work.
You can see the video below where you can see the fix in action:
To put it back in the case, I put a small piece of paper to make a bit of pressure around the SA2000 chip and so far, I haven’t yet had the orange LED issue again.
I hope that it keeps working fine, because I really enjoy the sound this DAC produces.
How to install Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18875
Today, I finally managed to install Windows 10 Insider Preview, build 18875. Previosuly, I was getting an error with code 0xca00a000.
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 1
After reading around the Feedback hub, it seems that disabling the Windows Search service and deleting the content of the Windows SoftwareDistribution folder fixes this, and the update is able to be installed succesful. Here, I’ll show you step by step how to do it.
Disabling the Windows Search service
First, press the keys Win + R and type services.msc, then press OK:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 2
The Windows Services management console will open. Go down and right click on the Windows Search service. You’ll click on Properties:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 3
Once you are in Properties, go to the Startup type drop down and select Disabled. Then, press OK:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 4
Right click on Windows Search again, and click on Stop:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 5
You may be prompted to disable other services. Press Yes:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 6
The Windows Search service should now be stopped.
Cleaning the SoftwareDistribution folder
The next step involves navigating to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution and deleting everything inside:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 7
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 8
You may be prompted to give administrator permissions in order to delete the contents. Press Continue:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 9
The contents will be deleted:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 10
And the folder will be empty:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 11
Now, on Windows Update, press Retry:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 12
It will begin getting ready, downloading, and installing the update:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 13
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 14
Finally, you’ll be prompted to restart your machine. Click on Restart Now:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 15
Everything should run smoothly now and the update should install fine:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 16
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 17
Once the installation finishes, you’ll be on the 18875 build of Windows 10:
Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview 18875 18
That’s it! Hope these steps were useful in getting you to install Windows 10 Insider Preview build 18875!
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