Durability DVD media

[darrellw]

hope this is in the right forum, if not i am sure that someone will tell me!
burned a number of dvd's 4/5 months ago( with loads of help of the forums, thanks folks) with a Matshita lfd310 burner, mainly Eproformance but also some Traxdata, and even the odd Infiniti and Ritek disc.
getting a 100% failure rate trying to rip same to my hard drive, using a Liteon LTD163D DVD-Rom.
tried another computer with the original burner in, getting similar results, 7/8 failures so far, all at different points on the disc.
only checked a couple on my standalone briefly, they do not play, cannot navigate to episodes.
only bought the Eproformance as they were voted 1st or was it second best budget disc on a web site, and they were not cheap at the time, the first lot were £1.80 each. if i had paid 60p a disc then, i could perhaps have expected some problems.
am really gutted, spent over a £100 on these discs, and countless hours of my time, ripping, transcoding, burning, splitting.

is this the normal expected lifespan of discs?
are these discs of "merchantable quality"?
what if i had used these recommended discs to back up valuable data that now could not be recovered?
what chance of i got of bouncing these discs back to the dealers involved?
:angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:
relly do need some help on this one
cheers
darrellw

[smiller667]

Sorry to hear that the lifespan of your discs is so short ... not that I would have heard of Eproformance or Infiniti. Traxdata has labelled all sorts of discs, including extremely low-quality Vivastars ... I can't tell you about Ritek, but there are b-grade riteks in the market. I don't have any personal experience with failing dvds, I am too new in this ...

But "voted best budget disc on a website"? I mean, if you have really important data, you should really buy brand-name media such as Verbatim, Pioneer, Tayo Yuden, TDK, you name it, even if you pay twice as much for it.

[padre]

what if i had used these recommended discs to back up valuable data that now could not be recovered?
Unfortunetly you have little recourse when it comes to recovering anything when you have bad discs (or they go bad after a while). The manufacturer or dealer at most will offer to replace the defective media. But that doesn't (and won't) cover your time and effort in creating and burning the disc, or the loss of the data.

It sucks, but that's just the way the warranty is written. So, even if you had used a high price media, like Verbatim, Pioneer, Tayo Yuden, TDK or others, you'd just recover the cost of the media.

No media is bullet-proof, but there's a reason some media is extra cheap. I use Riteks myself, and ever so often I put an old one in my DVD player or burner to make sure I can read it. So far, so good. Not so with stuff I recorded on Princo media (when I first got started). 100% bad.

[atreides93]

I haven't heard of that brand of media...sounds like you picked a loser. My Ritek's have been holding up pretty good so far. I had 13 month old disks that still play fine. Actually I haven't tested some in a while, I have some 15 month old ones I can try.

I think you need to stick with Ritek's for now, or get Verbatim. they're cheaper than most name brand discs.

[jfcarbel]

See my thread about TDK Armor Plated:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53398

From my experience I when I first started I use the MeritLine brand which I think were Princos. My second batch was bad, I have 3 of these that are unreadable in a DVD-ROM or DVD-R and I wont even risk using the rest.

I switched to rima.com and started using the Riteks because of the great reviews I saw here. And I can say personally these are great media. No problems ever.

I also treat my DVDs with a polymer made by CDPlayright which is a coating that expands the disc relectivity for better reads and helps the disc avoid dust and scratches. It does work.

[darrellw]

cheers folks for the relies.update.
Eproformance
seems like i have done them a bit of an injustice, failure rate not 100%,only 14/15 so far, or 93.33%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
one disc, yes one disc stll reads, but for how long that is the question. when you first start out on this happy road, as much as you try it is not always possible to make the best choices and i did do quite a lot of research into discs at the start 5/6 months ago.
have also been using Ritek for the last 3/4 months, holding up a lot better only i failure so far.
tried using Bulkpaq purple but that experiment did not last long, combination of forums and personal experience.
could we do with a sticky on known problem discs to help other newbies to avoid the pitfalls that i and others have experienced. media choice is not just about compatability (on an aging Matshita LFD310 Ram burner), but DURABILITY aswell. not only the time and effort, but also the expense, almost £100 down the drain that i can ill afford, being ill for quite a while now.
do we have any idea what the expected shelf life of DVD media is likely to be?. surely by it's very nature, backing up mainly movies? which tend to be dug out only once every blue moon or so, we really need to be talking about years not months otherwise we might aswell go back to good old VHS, which despite (or is it inspite, never got the hang of that, does it really matter) it's failings seems to be more relable, or is it the same with any nascent technology, you just have to suck it and see for a while.
whoops enough rambling, what was this post supposed to be about again?
cheers
darrellw

[bairradino]

I started to make my own DVD's few weeks ago and, recently, I found that my first DVD (HP DVD+RW) didn't work on my standalone player.
I cleaned it the best I could and... it worked again.
The message is: Do you have a good maintenance for your disks? I think that this is much more important for DVD's than for CD's

[darrellw]

yes i think i do, i take great care not to leave them lying around. i take great care when handling them, no grubby fingerprints here. once burnt they go straight into the case where a number of them have remained unplayed.
but does not explain the problems with trying to rip straight away after being burnt or the failure rate of over 95%, gone up since last post another few failures.
credit to SVP they replied to my e-mail offering to replace faulty discs that are returned to them, have nearly 40 or so but a few have gone to friends in other parts.
darrell

[leisuredoc]

@darrellw,

Number one way to keep optical media from getting worse is to keep it cool and keep it dry. Both humidity and temperature are detrimental to any optical media.

I always run a check on the burned media using K's Probe and, since you have a LiteON DVD-ROM drive, it will work for you as well. Check in the sticky's of this forum section for links, but you can download this app for free from http://members.chello.se/jonas.thornqvist/PDITOOL.zip

You put the burned disk in your LiteON reader, start this app, close the tray and click the Write Strategy tab (after shutting down any DVD player apps that happen to pop up).

I usually find that either the bad disks have incredible error rates toward the end (edge) of the disk or once in a while within the disk.

If you have a problem disk to start out, it isn't going to "heal" itself.

This K's Probe app is so good, I don't even have to play the disk on my standalone SONY DVD player since it finds problems before even a fussy player will. This is not to say that a disk that looks bad with K's Probe will not play - it might now, but maybe not later.

Try to get a variety of media to try this out and your will quickly learn what is good (higher cost) and what is not good (usually lower cost, but I've gotten scheise media labelled MEMOREX from Best Buy)

Hope this helps!

leisuredoc
:D

[smiller667]

Memorex sometimes doesn't even have a manufacturer ID on their DVD-R media ... I would not consider them a brand of particular quality (same for their CD-R media).

[bairradino]

And what about labels over DVD's?
Aren't they the cause of non reading DVD's?
What's your experience on it?

[darrellw]

re labels on dvd's.
the Eproformance discs are failing regardless of being labelled. the initial discs were labelled then i read somewhere that this might cause problems so i stopped using them, didn't seem to make any difference, they carried on failing.
darrellw
will look at that dvd-rom tool leisuredoc, cheers. the discs that are failing are failing at all stages, a number are not even navigating the menu properly, which is at the start of the disc, on the inside???? others at 25%/33%40%, really anywhere so not really an issue with burning them right to the edge.
darrellw

[Buddy]

I tried to find out the manufacturer id with kprobe on my nec writer. But kprobe does not give an manufacturer Id. It give's a lot of info but I can't do nothing much with that. Can someone help me on the right path? Pleazzzze?:stupid:

[gooki]

Install dvd decrypter www.dvddecrypter.com pop in a blank dvdr, select mode/iso/write

Manufacturer id will apepar in pannel to the right.

[Buddy]

Thanksss had allready installed dvddecrypter but never seen manufacturer Id in the box, looks like I have Datawrite dvd's without manufacturer id.:(

[sych0]

Ok, Ive been having some problems with ritek media as of late. Theyre g04 discs, and dvd decryptor reports them as so. But when i try to image a disc on my TDK IndiDVD 440n DVD±RW or Pioneer 16x dvd rom, it always ends up failing at one point. What gives? Bad drives or bad media? Ive been getting them from meritline. Are they bogus or something? Any info would be great. They do still work in my dvd player however.

[k2]

I can find info on who made which DVDR but what we really need is a long term reliability on each manufacturer.
A summary of how long the DVDR will last.

[atreides93]

That is rather disturbing sych0. How long ago did you burn these disks?
I don't trust anything I get from meritline, but that's just me. If they are reporting to be RitekG04's in dvd decryptor then I assume they are really Riteks.

[Andykard]

I've also been having problems with Ritek G04's. I have a Pioneer 104 burner and I always use to use G03's till they became unavailable some time ago, so I changed to the G04's, which also meant I could burn them at 2X. Originally (I have had 2 sets of 100 each) I had no problems on my standalone (a Pioneer DVD/Laserdisc combo), but more recently the discs began pixelating towards the middle or at the end, and sometimes freezing altogether. I now burn the G04's at 1X, but that still has not got rid of the problem. A friend of mine that has exactly the same player as myself also has the same problems with the discs I have problems with. However if I try playing them in my GO DVD player they sail through. I have just got Sonys writable DVD standalone and the problematic DVDs play perfectly on this player too. My conclusion is that I am going back to the G03 disks which never gave me any trouble with any player.

[pmc]

I also resently got some problematic old disc, the worst one are Princo 4x DVD-R that was only a week old. The movie i burned on this particular princo played fine in both my stand alone and on my dvd player when doing crc check for errors. Last night a friend came over and we watched this movie again and it played fine. So today my friend wanted a copy of it so I put it into my Lite ON DVD-Rom and started reading the disc and all of a sudden i get READ ERRORs.

I tried it my burner also and om ny stand alone and it seems the disc is corrupt at about 40% into the movie :(. When this happened I freaked out a bit and started scanning my other princo discs and about 70% of them cant be readed back again :( and atleast 90% of those ive already watched once without any problems so I know that they where burned 100% correctly and just have detoriated over time.

This realy sucks, sure they wherent that expensive but I could easily just bought a DVDRW disc instead and watched the movies once and thne erased it and saved a lot of money. These princo disc feels like they are like those rental dvds that you can only watch a couple of times, like 3 days and then its to corrupt to play again.

Also this isnt the first time this happened, ive had problem with Eproformance also. But they lasted 2 months atleast before some of them went corrupt, so I had atleast time to do backup of em all before I lost to much.

[LB]

All I got to say is:

Meritline
Ritek
G03
.85$ each
Free shipping

Why risk choosing another brand?

[keithmac]

I use Datawrite Classics (made by Datsafe) -r and have had no problems with them at all, these ar ony 2 speed though.

Written on a patched nec nd1300a with either Dvd decriptor or Pinnacle instant DVD (had no problems whichever method used).

I have some (1 speed) Datasafe`s that are over 2 years old and still play flawlessly in any standalone.

[Andykard]

I started another post on the issue of stability of ritek disks that started misbehaving after a few months storage and it was pointed out to me that it might be the labels I was using. I removed the labels and sure enough the disks were again fine. Visibly the labels look perfect but they turned out to be the culprit. Are you using labels, if so try removing them.