Long term study

[seo125]

I want to collect everyones experience with how long a DVDR lasts.
I will post the results for all to use.

Please post a reply - tell me your good as well as your bad.

Brand name:
Mfg:
burn speed:
date recorded:
date last tested good:
date failed to read:


Best Regards

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[setarip_old]

I'd be surprised if you find any significant number of DVD users who starting in 2005 (in my case) have maintained logs with the specific information you're seeking - but good luck, nonetheless ;>}

[Ghitulescu]

My log is a spindle of coasters :) I started in 2002-2003.
Most of them have been produced by using an unadequate burner, I changed it and no problems. Later on I got two auto-strategy Plextors and no worry, except for dual/double layers for which I'm using an old LG.

I wonder what can you do with this info. The discs that have ben burned 10 years ago and withstood the time are for 8 years no longer sold. And those burned today won't be found in the next 10 years.

My experience is that 2002-2004 all discs were good, at least if they bore a name (TDK, Memorex, TY, Verbatim, Sony etc.), the only issue was a burner with no good strategy for that particular disc. Later on the burners improved, including more strategies, however the "samba" of 16x, 20x, 24x had just began and the results were worse. Almost everyone did "overspeeding". A bit later the big names started to outsource their discs and got into the new business called blu-ray. Lower prices and higher speeds made the later burners unreliable, as no manufacturer ever spend money on fine tuning the burner to every dye and MID on the market. Today, lots of Indian and Taiwanese discs, cheaper burners, your conclusions ;)

Of course, one should never forget the "fake" issue.

That is in short my experience.

[hello_hello]

Yeah, as setarip_old indicated the best you could probably hope for is speculation. I doubt too many users would actually have owned a wide enough range of burners of various ages, while consistently using the same type of discs, to do anything more than speculate.

Then there's also disc usage to take into account. You can't compare discs the kids have used for the past two years with discs kept in storage.

Me..... several years ago I owned a couple of NuTech burners and was burning to low quality discs such as Ritek and CMC. My standalone player at the time had problems reading a lot of them and when I later learned how to check the quality, I discovered how poor they were.
So then I went on a mission to reburn everything at a high quality. I settled on Pioneer burners and Verbatim MCC media which I've mainly been using ever since (I own Pioneer burners from DVR-112 to DVR-218, and they all burn equally well, although the later models do so at higher speeds). I've tried other brands of discs now and then but always gone back to Verbatim. So for me, burn quality has improved over the years and I'm still currently burning DVDs at a high quality using the same discs. All of my Verbatim discs are still readable, as far as I know.

You'd probably find there's a vague consensus here as to which media has been quality and which has been rubbish, but I doubt you'll collect any meaningful statistics.

[Ghitulescu]

NuTech drives are manufactured by QSI, probably the worst manufacturer of DVD drives. It was a good move that you stepped away from these coaster-makers.
Strange enough, and here I am really interested, is how do you assess the quality of the DVR-218 (compared to the previous ones), considering that it is manufactured by QSI, too? And uses a Mediatek chipset instead of NEC?

[hello_hello]

NuTech drives are manufactured by QSI, probably the worst manufacturer of DVD drives. It was a good move that you stepped away from these coaster-makers.
Strange enough, and here I am really interested, is how do you assess the quality of the DVR-218 (compared to the previous ones), considering that it is manufactured by QSI, too? And uses a Mediatek chipset instead of NEC?

To be honest I don't really care who makes it, only how good it is. Preconceived ideas aren't always the best ones on which to base conclusions. The previous Pioneer drives weren't always perfect. I've owned two NEC chipset Pioneer drives which didn't even come close to making it to the end of the warranty period. I also still own a 212 which spits out coasters any time I try to burn a disc at 16x, but as I tend to burn at 12x when using the older drives anyway, I never got around to returning it.
In fact the only reason I own a 218 is because the last Pioneer drive I bought, which I think was a 217, was one of the drives which died while under warranty and they replaced it with the 218 which was by then the current model.

To be honest I was initially very disappointed in the 218 as it didn't burn to Verbatim discs very well at all. The quality was pretty average at best and it did spit out quite a few coasters. Fortunately, a firmware update fixed that.

Of course as I mainly use Verbatim discs and don't have second sight, I can't really vouch for it's ability to burn to a wide variety of media, but to answer your question as to how I asses the quality....
I couldn't be bothered hunting through discs trying to find ones which had been burned by that particular drive, but I needed to burn a couple of fresh discs anyway, so here they are (using those err.... Taiwanese made MCCs).

Burned at 16x:

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a142/dashpb1/16x.gif

Burned at 20x (I normally don't, but just for fun I thought I'd see how much it'd effect the quality. As it didn't really make much difference, maybe I will burn at 20x from now on):

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a142/dashpb1/20x.gif

[Ghitulescu]

I was really disappointed by the quality of DL burns of all my Pioneers, that's why I asked, despite various reports in dedicated fora considered them THE burners for DL (like backing games for consoles or navigations maps).

[hello_hello]

Admittedly I couldn't tell you how the 218 burns to dual layer discs of any kind as I've never used it to burn one.
Maybe that's why we have such differing opinions on this subject.... if you burn to DL media a lot. I certainly don't.
I assume you tried different brands of discs and different burning speeds etc? Which model Pioneer drives have you owned? I was under the impression you must consider NEC chipset drives to be fairly decent given you often mention Pioneer no longer manufacture drives themselves and how they switched to Mediatek chipsets.

[Ghitulescu]

I own all the Pioneers from the second generation (the first one being way too expensive, some 12,000$) to the ninth, ie from DVR-S201 (the authoring drive) to DVR-109, then I lost my confidence in Pioneer. Strange enough, but not inconceivable, is that the oldest generations (DVR-103 and 104), if updated to 16x discs, provide better results than the latter ones, no wonder they have been used in Apple.
There are only few chipsets for DVD recorders, the best being Sanyo (Sanyo, Plextor and several Japan-only drives). There are also NEC, Renesas and Mediatek. Sony had its own chipset, but AFAIK only for CDRs. The issue here is not the chip manufacturer, but the carefulness a manufacturer fine tunes the burner to the available MIDs.

[Chetwood]

Well, I think the question was relevant in 2004 or so. Don't know anyone who still burns any media. All have switched to HDDs and flash drives.

[Ghitulescu]

Don't know anyone who still burns any media. All have switched to HDDs and flash drives.

Well, meet me.

I explained in another thread why I think the market for WORMs will exist also in the future, similar to internet vs. books (printed books :)), internet info can change while scripta manent.

I suffered 3 or 4 total HDD disasters over 20 years (of which 2 HDDs with companies' sensible data) and thus I value a non-erasable, shock-proof and so on medium. I know there are better media (like DLT, MO and Blu-ray for data) but they either are too expensive or have ridiculous access times.

[hello_hello]

Well, I think the question was relevant in 2004 or so. Don't know anyone who still burns any media. All have switched to HDDs and flash drives.

Well I'll confess I mainly burn to Bluray discs these days, but I just can't bring myself to forgo burning backup copies even though I do store everything on hard drives.
And I hate it. It's tedious and discs are annoying. Hard drives are far more convenient.... until they stop working.....

Last time I bought some Bluray blanks I seriously considered not buying them and doubling up on hard drives to store everything on two drives instead. But I just can't give up the "permanent" copy yet....

[Chetwood]

Don't get me wrong, I'm also still waiting for a credit card sized holographic WORM that's stackable, durable and holds 3 TB or so. Until then, I'm gonna keep my stuff on 2 HDDs.

[Ghitulescu]

Maybe you're right about DVDRs. Its peak reached probably 2004. Now it's the time to check the BDRs for those 50 years promised (guaranteed???) by among others Panasonic :)