Me and my brother have a 360 each, his with an MS25 and mine with an MS28. His will read crappy media and loves it whereas mine just grinds and decides to spit it out (most of the time). His drive is also quicker, they are both flashed with 5.3a and the MS25 is just quicker. Any reason for this, or is my MS28 just being a POS?

ive noticed that every samsung is different picky wise, my first ms25 read everything like a god, then the 2nd ms25 i had was really lame and gave me dirty disk error, i even checked the POT and they were both very similar, i even changed the new one to the old one's POT.

now all my xbox 360s are ms28s and will read VERBATIM only and everything else dosen't work, all my old backups that were on cheap media were useless as of now, so i burn verbatim only. i think the way the dvd drive reads is different per drive considering media, temperature, disk surface (labels), POT settings, and ambient temperatures, there are many different things that could make the drives different, i wish every drive was like my first ms25!!! i hope this helps you in some way, just sharing my thoughts!

The only difference is the FW, as far as the rest of the drive goes they're all the same parts. Just because one works better than another doesn't mean ones better, I'm sure there are others that have had ms25s that were crap and then an ms28 that was great. Ya may need to do a POT tweak or replace your laser. If it's making a really nasty grinding noise the magnet on the spindle could be loose or the lid bent making that top part of the spindle rub.