If you are seeing this message, don't panic. You haven't broken your drive, and your disc isn't necessarily faulty. You have simply run into the ongoing "arms race" between encryption protocols and ripping software.

There is nothing more frustrating than slotting in a brand new 4K Blu-ray, firing up MakeMKV, and waiting for that sweet sound of your disc drive spinning up... only to be met with a wall of red text and the dreaded error: "The volume key is unknown for this disc - can't decrypt."

Here is everything you need to know about why this error happens and exactly how to fix it. To put it simply: MakeMKV knows how to decrypt Blu-rays, but it doesn't know the password for this specific disc.

4K UHD Blu-rays use a protocol called . Every single disc pressed has a unique set of cryptographic keys. When you buy a disc, the player uses a hidden key to unlock the content.

Happy ripping!