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[newsposter]

Hi, just 'inherited a huge pile of media that I need to import.

What's the current favorite DVD/BR capable drive (assuming that such a drive would read music CDs as well)?  Speed/accuracy, relatively quiet operation, and a USB 3 connection, etc, etc.

Thanks!

[wer]

LG drives are fast. Pioneer drives will often read discs that LG can't.

The selection of quality USB drives is more limited. You might consider mounting a regular internal drive in an external USB enclosure if you want to get the best drive and insist on it being external.

I can't really suggest a native USB drive, other than to suggest you try to determine who actually makes the drive inside it.

You trade-off speed for noise. Some drives have an "acoustic" mode but all that does is slow the drive down.

[zybex]

Another option is to buy 2 or 4 cheap drives and work them in parallel to rip the collection in half or 1/4th the time. I did that when I decided to rip my 1500 CDs/500 DVDs. Still took ages.

In my experience the LGs read pretty much everything. I ended up with about 40 or 50 unreadable discs that had visible spots or scratches (sun exposure, some of them).

[wer]

LG drives are fine, I wouldn't hesitate to use one. But Pioneer are better. Also more expensive and slower.

In my experience, if LG won't read a disc, about 90% of the time Pioneer will. If Pioneer won't read a disc, LG will read it about 25% of the time.

If you are going to have multiple drives, definitely make sure they are different brands. That way you will be much less likely to be blocked by problematic discs. Do your research to confirm, as there are surprises, like LG actually makes Asus branded drives.

[syndromeofadown]

Before buying drives have a look into "LibreDrive' capable ones. I think they may be referred to as UHD capable BD drives too. Lots of info out there, check out makemkv forums.
I have a few that work great. I got them early on before companies could update firmware on them. I think the newer ones may need firmware patches to work, at least they did last I checked.

For video discs I have had best results using LG drives. ASUS drives have caused me trouble but still worked OK.
I have never noticed a difference between brands with CDs, but it's nice to have 2 brands incase one has trouble with a disc.