LG external Blu-ray burner does not show up on my iMac (2019) macOS Catalina

Yes, the iMac came with Mojave and it was upgraded to Catalina, but it did work with Mojave. I ordered a new USBa-b 3.0 cable to replace the one that came with the new LG Blu-ray rewriter from Amazon and it will be here late tomorrow afternoon. Yes, it is a powered Blu-ray burner and yes, LG informed me that there is no firmware update for it. As they explained, it is plug and play.

Yes to your last question.

I do not see the optical drive even if it has a blank or burnt DVD or Blu-ray disc installed. Yes, all the boxes are checked and still no optical drive. I just purchased a new USB a-b 3.0 cable and it still does not work. I did this as a suggestion from LG support.

Any other suggestions? Thanks for the reply.

Thank you. I've already tried that and still nothing works. I thought I would purchase a different Blu-ray burner from Best Buy, but before I do, I'll ask if they are sure it is compatible with Catalina so that if it is not recognized, I can return it. If it does work,

I will report my good news here.

Thank you all again.

That's where I bought this one. I am in contact with them, but I thought it would be easier trying Best Buy because I

can purchase it at the store and return it to the same store if needed and then I wouldn't need to worry about the cost

of return shipping.

That's a great idea but I don't have a local source for another Mac running Catalina. I could possibly do this in 2 weeks when

we visit my son in LA who has a iMac running on Catalina. That's a consideration. Thanks!

I purchased an LG Blu-ray burner from Best Buy with the condition that I could return it for any reason (especially if it didn't work with Catalina) and tried it out. At first, nothing appeared on the desktop or the sidebar so I was quite disappointed. However, once I placed a DVD in burner, the DVD icon showed up in both places. Even with a DVD in the other burner, nothing would show up. Now I know that the original Blu-ray player is defective so I am in the process of exchanging it with macsales.com.

Thank you all for your input! I really appreciated it.

I took it to the Apple Store on February 8, 2020 and they tried some diagnostics and then decided to connect a Super drive to it and it worked so they thought it was either the USBa-b 3.0 cable or the unit itself. Once they determined that a different drive worked, no more was done.

I returned it to Macsales. They provided free shipping back to the store and no charge for the repair or exchange. I just received it and it works! Apparently, the one I had before had a defect.

Thank you to those of you who came to my rescue.

I believe it was this model: LG - 8x External USB 2.0 Blu-ray Disc Double-Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Disc Rewriter - Black

Model:BP50NB40 SKU:9243009.

I hope this works out for you. What a hassle it was to finally get my situation straightened out.