HD Drive

[rotjong]

Riplock is an artificial restriction of read speed to discourage ripping of discs that your drive will read. If it's going to take longer to rip than it would to drive to the store and buy another copy, what are you more likely to do?

LOL. Valid point and I know riplock is artificial. For normal DVD my understanding has always been that it kicks in when CCS was detected however I find that to not be the case with many drives. Older real Plextor drives allowed you to bypass riplock by holding the eject button for 3 seconds until the light blinked 3 times. They were speed demons. The LG GSA-H55N and GSA-H55L drives are good drives but slow and even with patched firmware to remove riplock I still find that woefully slow. The Samsung SH-S223F is an amazing SATA drive once you patch the firmware. For that drive you need to use a patcher by C0deking. That drive is the fastest drive in terms of reading that I've come across. Not the best burner but for ripping my DVDs and CDs it is beautiful and it's relegated to only that role on my system. I have a dedicated reader, dedicated burner, and then there is my drive only used for HD-DVD/BluRay reading. Each has its own limited job.

Anyway, my point about the lifespan of the drive and the speed was that I didn't know riplock existed for HD-DVD/BluRay reading drives and it's one thing to read at say 7 MB/s but I wonder at what point the speed of reading will begin to increase the chance of errors with HD-DVD/BluRay. Extended use at higher speeds could wear out the drive quicker. I'm not overly concerned because in a year or so I'll likely have upgraded to a burner anyway but it's something that did cross my mind.

 

[Not Bman]

Oh and I can't seem to find the 1.03 fireware on LG's site, I can't find anything on that site, never have been able to. I hate it lol

Anyway, my point about the lifespan of the drive and the speed was that I didn't know riplock existed for HD-DVD/BluRay reading drives and it's one thing to read at say 7 MB/s but I wonder at what point the speed of reading will begin to increase the chance of errors with HD-DVD/BluRay. Extended use at higher speeds could wear out the drive quicker. I'm not overly concerned because in a year or so I'll likely have upgraded to a burner anyway but it's something that did cross my mind.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[rotjong]

Does having it region free matter if you can just rip with AnyDVD HD anyways?

It shouldn't matter, no. Just set your drive to Region 1 since you are in Canada and always have AnyDVD HD running and you should be set. I would strongly, however, advise you to not use the LG GGC-H20L for such frivolous purposes as reading, ripping, or burning normal SD DVDs if you already have another DVD burner in your system. Why put extra wear and tear on the drive? You can purchase just about any very good SD DVD burner for 30 USD whereas the LG GGC-H20L goes for between 150 and 200 USD. My philosophy is to only use it when I need it.

Also, realize that drive regions for SD DVD which are regions 1 through 8 are not the same as the lettered regions for BluRay. The RPC2 patch only applies to the regions pertaining to SD DVDs.

 

[rotjong]

Oh and I can't seem to find the 1.03 fireware on LG's site, I can't find anything on that site, never have been able to. I hate it lol

Let me see if I can find a direct download link. They like to hide the download links, as well.

 

[Not Bman]

It shouldn't matter, no. Just set your drive to Region 1 since you are in Canada and always have AnyDVD HD running and you should be set. I would strongly, however, advise you to not use the LG GGC-H20L for such frivolous purposes as reading, ripping, or burning normal SD DVDs if you already have another DVD burner in your system. Why put extra wear and tear on the drive? You can purchase just about any very good SD DVD burner for 30 USD whereas the LG GGC-H20L goes for between 150 and 200 USD. My philosophy is to only use it when I need it.

Also, realize that drive regions for SD DVD which are regions 1 through 8 are not the same as the lettered regions for BluRay. The RPC2 patch only applies to the regions pertaining to SD DVDs.

Yea that is exactly what I was doing, using my older one to burn cds and dvds instead of the nice HD one. More use = less time to live lol.

 

[rotjong]

Let me see if I can find a direct download link. They like to hide the download links, as well.

I can't find a direct download anywhere. You'll need to follow my directions from an older post here: http://forum.osnn.net/showpost.php?p=839738&postcount=49.

I forgot to mention before that you should update the firmware to 1.03 if the drive didn't come updated. I figure it likely shipped with the 1.02 firmware.

Go here: http://www.lge.com/support/software.jsp

1. Select your geographic location.
2. Click on the DVD-ROM (Writer) link that's near the bottom on the right of the page.
3. Find your drive listed and download the 1.03 firmware.

LG's download site is a total pain in the butt.

 

[Not Bman]

Now before I do this, when I installed the drive, it auto updated firmware, but not sure if it was 1.03 or not. Is there a way to check?

*EDIT, found it and it says I am running 1.03 firmware. Can I still update it and add that speed hack to it?

 

[rotjong]

Now before I do this, when I installed the drive, it auto updated firmware, but not sure if it was 1.03 or not. Is there a way to check?

In AnyDVD it will show the firmware version next to the drive model in the status window. Nero DiscSpeed will show the firmware version of the drive. I think it's likely the firmware is 1.02. My drive came with the 1.02 firmware from December and I got it in April. The 1.03 firmware just came within the last month or so which makes me believe your drive won't have been updated.

 

[rotjong]

EDIT, found it and it says I am running 1.03 firmware. Can I still update it and add that speed hack to it?

Yes, I flashed my already flashed v1.03 firmware drive with the patched v1.03 firmware.

 

[Not Bman]

Downloaded the 1.03 fireware from here

http://www.lge.com/support/software.jsp

the first in the list, but its only 161bytes, and when I extract there is nothing there. Is the file corrupt or something?

 

[LordOfLA]

Attached is the stock 1.03 and my pre-patched riplock/rpc2 reset firmware.

View attachment GGC-H20L_1.03_speedpatched.exe

View attachment GGC-H20L_1.03.exe

 

[rotjong]

Downloaded the 1.03 fireware from here

http://www.lge.com/support/software.jsp

the first in the list, but its only 161bytes, and when I extract there is nothing there. Is the file corrupt or something?

You aren't downloading the firmware then. It's just shy of 2 MB. Select North America and then Canada and then on the bottom right of the screen click DVD-ROM (Writer) and then click on the LG GGC-H20L 1.03 firmware. Do not use a download manager. They use javascript all through their pages and it won't let you use a download manager. They even block you from right-clicking.

Attached is the stock 1.03 and my pre-patched riplock/rpc2 reset firmware.

Nice. I didn't wanted to attach the patched firmware. That should make things easier.

Edit: Removed Badongo link.

 

[Not Bman]

Attached is the stock 1.03 and my pre-patched riplock/rpc2 reset firmware.

View attachment 10087

View attachment 10088

Thanks going to patch right now. Yours does the speed thing and the Region thing correct?

 

[rotjong]

Attached is the stock 1.03 and my pre-patched riplock/rpc2 reset firmware.

If something goes wrong it's all on you!

Thanks going to patch right now. Yours does the speed thing and the Region thing correct?

The file with '_speedpatched' in the filename is the patched firmware. The other file is the original unpatched firmware.

 

[Not Bman]

Yes I know that, i was asking if he has done both the speed hack and the no region hack.

 

[Not Bman]

1. Mount the ISO using Virtual CloneDrive.

Is there a reason you say Virtual CloneDrive? I tried mounting my .iso file I created with Daemon Tools Lite and PowerDVD says unsupported when I try to play it.

 

[LordOfLA]

Yes I know that, i was asking if he has done both the speed hack and the no region hack.

Yes I did.

 

[rotjong]

Yes I know that, i was asking if he has done both the speed hack and the no region hack.

From his wording, yes, I believe he did with the speedpatched firmware.

Is there a reason you say Virtual CloneDrive? I tried mounting my .iso file I created with Daemon Tools Lite and PowerDVD says unsupported when I try to play it.

I use Virtual CloneDrive because it is developed keeping AnyDVD in mind more than Daemon Tools is. There have also been many reported issues with the newest 4.30 version of Daemon Tools. For instance a mounted ISO of a BluRay disc will not not play in PowerDVD for many many people. It worked in the previous release of Daemon Tools but not now. They made changes that have caused issues. Daemon Tools also requires the installation of SPTD. Some people have no issues with using SPTD and others have a lot of issues. SPTD has been linked to slow ripping speeds with some drives including the LG drives. If someone uninstalled SPTD their rip speed doubled.

And for clarification, SPTD is SCSCI Pass Through Direct layer for accessing storage devices. It is developed solely by DuplexSecure and acts as a layer along the lines of ASPI, ASAPI, SPTI, etc, but has some of its own features.

I do not like SPTD.

 

[Not Bman]

I don't have SPTD installed, and don't think I have ever used it. I do have the latest Daemon Tools which I actually JUST updated to. So I assume I have the same issue as everyone else. Now I use DT because it's free, reason why I switched from 120% to DT is because of that.

I know I can get a hacked version of the program but I hate doing that, and I don't really have money to spend on these kinds of things. Any other options?

Oh just did the firmware update, all went well.

 

[rotjong]

I don't have SPTD installed, and don't think I have ever used it. I do have the latest Daemon Tools which I actually JUST updated to. So I assume I have the same issue as everyone else. Now I use DT because it's free, reason why I switched from 120% to DT is because of that.

Daemon Tools installs SPTD. You have to have SPTD installed to use Daemon Tools. Annoyingly, if you uninstall Daemon Tools it doesn't uninstall SPTD. You have to download the SPTD installer from DuplexSecure and run it. You will then be prompted whether to Install or Uninstall. The installer functions as both. You can get the installer/uninstaller here: http://www.duplexsecure.com/downloads.

Virtual CloneDrive is free as is ImgBurn. Use ImgBurn to create images and Virtual CloneDrive to mount them. You won't need Daemon Tools. Check out the Virtual CloneDrive webpage here: http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html.

I know I can get a hacked version of the program but I hate doing that, and I don't really have money to spend on these kinds of things. Any other options?

See what I wrote above.

Oh just did the firmware update, all went well.

Great!