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Old 16th January 2011, 14:09   #12  |  Link
yetanotherid
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 723
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ghitulescu View Post
I'm afraid there are no longer good DVDRs nowadays. I own some CDRs that are some 12 years old but still yield lower C1/C2 than a brand new CDR burnt yesterday. The DVD technology is close to its end, no manufacturers spend time and energy for producing quality items ... yes, not even Verbatim.
Well, I've been using Verbatim for a long time, generally using Pioneer burners, and if the disc is being burned just for backup storage (and I can't imagine too many other reasons for using a disc these days) I always run a quality check on it.
Given I'm still burning at the same quality level I was two years ago, where's the quality deterioration in the Verbatim discs I bought today, because I'm not seeing any.

IceFiend,
Burning speed and burn quality aren't necessarily directly related. It depends on the type of dye used on the disc and how well your particular burner burns to that dye. Burners adjust their burning strategy according to the type of dye etc.
In my case..... Pioneer burners and Verbatim discs.... my old 16x Pioneer burners produce the best quality (on average) at 12x. Lower than that and the quality tends to drop a little. The newer 18x and 20x Pioneer burners seem to produce the best quality burns (on average) at 16x.

If you store the discs upright (not stacked), only use CD markers and avoid labels which need to be glued to the disc, and if you store them in a cool, dry place, and if the burn quality was reasonable to begin with, then a good quality disc such as Verbatim should be readable for a long, long time.

I'd take any anecdotal stories regarding lower C1/C2 errors on older discs with a grain of salt until they come fully qualified with information such as whether a different burner is being used today, whether the brand of discs is still the same and whether the discs still use the same dye.

Running a verification test after a burn doesn't give you much idea as to the quality. Unless you want to sit there and watch the whole verification process to ensure the drive doesn't slow done in order to read the disc it just burned... but if you can't verify the quality accurately it's probably slightly better than no test at all.
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