malware nuked my drive

[Acorn]

I was hoping someone could help me with a problem. Maybe there is a hardware expert around. I have a samsung SE 506 BB combo blue ray drive. I think some malware flashed something to or on to my drive. It plays blue rays perfectly but it wiped all dvd and cd capabilities. you can put a dvd disk in the drive and its dead in the water. also the read time is shortened like it only looks at the disk for 2 seconds before telling windows there is no disk in the drive. Ive tried flashing firmware to the drive and it did nothing in terms of fixing it. It still wont read/burn/write any dvd disks of any kind. Is there something I can do to get my drive fully functional again besides buying a new drive.

 

[Fishrrman]

Before you blame it on the drive, take the drive and try it with a DIFFERENT Mac or even a PC.

When connected to another Mac, does it still exhibit the same problems?

 

[Acorn]

I tried it on my imac with the same result. also a bootcamp partition (win 7) as well as a regular windows machine (win 10). Its not reading bluerays anymore. I dont know what I did. The drive doesnt show up as a recognizable drive now with any media in it. Ive tried blue ray, dvd, recordable dvd, cdr. the light blinks for a second then stops. Im going to try 2 more things tomorrow then I may trash it. Im going to try cleaning it and im going to try a new usb cord. I hate to trash a 100 dollar blue ray player but im at my wits end at this point. Ive put 40 hours into this already. IT shouldnt be almost a full time job just to get a player to read disks.

 

[ApolloBoy]

That sounds like a hardware issue with the drive, why on earth would you think it's malware?

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Sounds like a dirty laser, which is quite normal. Why people just invent "OMG IT IS VIRUS/MALWARE FROM HACKERS AND THE GOVERNMENT!!!" stories all the time beats me.

 

[ApolloBoy]

Why people just invent "OMG IT IS VIRUS/MALWARE FROM HACKERS AND THE GOVERNMENT!!!" stories all the time beats me.

Those stories usually come from people who aren't very knowledgable about computers in general so that's not surprising. But yeah, it does sound like a dirty laser could be the issue. My Samsung Blu-Ray player occasionally skipped when playing Blu-Rays and had a lot of trouble playing certain DVDs, but cleaning the lens using one of those special cleaning discs (using a Q-tip or the like can actually damage the Blu-Ray lens BTW) completely eliminated those issues.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Those stories usually come from people who aren't very knowledgable about computers in general so that's not surprising.

Then they should not come up with random dripple and just accept that they are clueless on the topic and state so.

 

[Krevnik]

It does sound like a dirty laser that needs to be cleaned or a defective laser that needs to be repaired. If a laser cleaning disc doesn't work, and it's under warranty, get Samsung to do something about it.