External Drive Quits While Ripping Music

[Reddkryten]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone can help me with a technical problem. I’m tearing my hair out here.

I have a Macbook Air and recently bought an external blu-ray drive. It plays films just fine.
The drive has a split usb/usb-c cable but only likes the USB to be plugged in, if both connectors are in use the drive isn’t recognised and if the usb-c is used the drive makes clunking sounds.

A few days ago I tried to rip a cd using apple music. It started and ripped two tracks, then gave an error that the track could not be found. The drive had disconnected.

At first I thought it was a power issue, the port was supplying enough power for the drive to run at 1x speed, but as soon as it spun up to 24x it ran out of power and died.
I’ve tried every possible combination I can think of, one port into a wall charger, the other into the mac, powered hubs, everything. No matter what, it rips one or two tracks then stops.

Any idea what I should do?

 

[Bigwaff]

Does sound like a power issue, especially if your external blu-ray drive is bus powered. You may have no choice but to get a blu-ray drive with its own external power supply.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you do look for another drive as waff suggests, I'd recommend that you get "a large one".
By that I mean a full-sized enclosure (5 1/4"), again with a power brick (or perhaps its own built-in power supply).

EDIT: I've deleted something I wrote earlier about a "Y" cable.
I'm thinking the cable you have (which has both a USBa and USBc plug, is this correct?) may offer 2 plugs as a matter of convenience. Not really a "Y cable" which is intended to be connected to two USB ports at once.

Here's a workaround. It doesn't "solve" your problem, but might be worth trying.
- On your INTERNAL drive, create a new folder (any name you want)
- Connect the BD/DVD/CD drive and insert a music CD
- Let the drive icon mount on the desktop
- Now, open the CD icon and try using the finder to copy all the CD tracks into the newly-created folder. Can you copy them?
- When done, eject the CD and see if you can import the tracks from the desktop folder.
Any better?