DVD/CD/Bluray-reader

[Sophie Bossaert]

Dear Sir, Madam,

We have recently purchased a CD-DVD reader (ASUS SDRW-08U7M) but it turns out that it's  not compatible with Linux. 

May I ask which CD/DVD reader or Bluray reader you use to read optical disks with Guymager and if it's still available on the market?

Thank you for your help,

Sophie Bossaert

[Kam Woods]

Apologies nobody got back to you earlier on this. Most USB CD/DVD drives on the market should be compatible with Linux, even if they are not explicitly labeled as such. I have a US-market version of the Asus ZenDrive U7M (the drive you referenced here) that works fine in Ubuntu, but your version may be different. Perhaps you have already run additional tests to confirm that the drive is actually the problem, but if not, you may wish to try the following:

With the drive plugged directly into the host computer (not a USB hub), using both USB A connectors (if you have a version with the split cable), what output do you see when you run:

lsusb

in a terminal? If you see a line in the output something like "Bus 003 Device 006: ID 0e8d:1887 MediaTek Inc. Slim Portable DVD Writer", the drive has been recognized, should be available for read/write operations, and your problem may lie elsewhere. If the drive *is* recognized, you can further inspect its capabilities by installing the following toolset:

sudo apt-get install libcdio-utils

and - with the USB optical drive still attached - running the command:

cd-rom

in a terminal. If successful, you'll see output that includes something like the following:

Hardware                                  : CD-ROM or DVD
Can eject                                 : Yes
Can close tray                            : Yes
Can disable manual eject                  : Yes
Can select juke-box disc                  : No

Can set drive speed                       : No
Can read multiple sessions (e.g. PhotoCD) : Yes
Can hard reset device                     : Yes

Reading....
  Can read Mode 2 Form 1                  : Yes
  Can read Mode 2 Form 2                  : Yes
  Can read (S)VCD (i.e. Mode 2 Form 1/2)  : Yes
  Can read C2 Errors                      : Yes
  Can read IRSC                           : Yes
  Can read Media Channel Number (or UPC)  : Yes
  Can play audio                          : Yes
  Can read CD-DA                          : Yes
  Can read CD-R                           : Yes
  Can read CD-RW                          : Yes
  Can read DVD-ROM                        : Yes

Writing....
  Can write CD-RW                         : Yes
  Can write DVD-R                         : Yes
  Can write DVD-RAM                       : Yes
  Can write DVD-RW                        : No
  Can write DVD+RW                        : No

Finally, if all of these succeed but the drive is still not showing up in Guymager when a disk is inserted, note that depending on your sequence of operations it is sometimes necessary to hit "Rescan" in the Guymager interface before the disk shows up.

If none of these things work, or you have confirmed via some other source that your particular drive is definitely incompatible with Linux, you can try one of the Hitachi/LG drives. I regularly test with the GP57 and GP65 models, and both work fine in Ubuntu. This isn't an endorsement of those drives - they're pretty middle of the road - but if you just need a cheap USB optical drive, those are in about the same performance class as the ZenDrive U7M.

Kam

[Kam Woods]

Oops, I realized there was a mistype in that last message. The scan tool provided by libcdio-utils is "cd-drive", not "cd-rom".

Kam