DVD Longevity

[zardiw]

Probably another forum for this, but I can't find it.....

I've burned quite a few DVD's over the last year or so, and have noticed that among the first ones I burned, i.e. a year or so old now, quite a few have started getting errors in my DVD player (I haven't played them that often either). They won't read into my computer anymore either.

Has anyone else found a problem with this?

Using a DVD200E HP dvdwriter, Nero, Apex DVD player, and Verbatim DVD+R discs...................Thx, z

[2COOL]

I'd say the media just went bad or went through some wear and tear. I had a couple of long time backups and I used Phillips brand.

[Matthew]

Originally posted by zardiw
Verbatim DVD+R discs

Verbatim is a good brand, I wouldn't expect that - unless as 2COOL suggests they copped some bad treatment (maybe sunlight or something). Are you sure they are manufactured by Verbatim (i.e. MCC)? Verbatim (and TDK, for that matter) are in the habit of selling cheaper 3rd party media in spindles. Check the manufacturer code (e.g. using DVD Decypter's iso write mode).

[Teegedeck]

Verbatim only sell Mitsubishi (=Verbatim) and Taiyo Yuden media in their DataLifePlus line AFAIK. And Taiyo Yuden is about en par with Mitsubishi in quality. Taiyo Yuden ('Verbatim Pastell' branded Verbatims) are made in Japan, most other cakebox Verbatim media sold in Europe are made in India (those sold in the US often are made in Mexico) and only some made in Japan. Though I wouldn't say they`re necessarily inferior to the made-in-Japan ones; they are made on special production-lines with Mitsubishi stampers by other producers.

If the DVD is only DataLife (without the Plus) it could well be a CMC made one. Check this page (http://www.cdr-forum.de/index_dvdrohlinge.php) to determine that.

[zardiw]

Ya know....prices of hard drives are coming down. On EBay, you can get a 300G for less than $300....and price per Gig is as low as .67 or so. SO, i'm about to give up on DVD burning, and just rip the f.ckers to disk and be done with it. A 300G drive at say 5G per flick is 60 movies, and you don't have to worry about DVD 'rot'. So your cost right now would be about $3/movie just keeping it on your HD. They make stuff where you can play it on your TV from your computer................z

[unmei]

Issues you have with harddrives but not DVDs:
-they are always on, consuming power
-at some point you will need controller cards as all your on-board IDE controllers are used up
-the normal ones are not handy to bring to friends and those removable ones are still more annoying to install than inserting a DVD

[fccHandler]

- Hard drives can die too, and in that event you risk losing all 60 movies instead of just one.

[Joe Fenton]

Yeah, the general life of a drive in normal use is about 10 years or less, depending on how much it gets used. If you just use it now and then for playing movies, it should last longer.

Another thing, harddrives are susceptible to magnetic fields. You could accidentally erase your drives in a variety of ways.

[Teegedeck]

The safest solution is probably to make 2 backups, then copy the first dics onto a new one after some years, the second one after some more years and so on and so on... Or wait a bit and copy several discs to whatever the next optical storage standard will be.

[unmei]

O/T
copy several discs to whatever the next optical storage standard will be.

yes it's so nice to see how much (physical, shelf) space i save by copying my old CDs to DVD..

[theReal]

zardiw, have you read the manufacturer code of the discs?
I'd be very concerned to hear that Verbatim Discs with MCC or TY manufacturer code are failing after only one year.
I burn all my important stuff to Verbatim because they are supposed to be the best, qualitywise (and by quality I mean longevity - many discs are good now and in a month, but in one or two years...)

[Soulhunter]

Normally I use Verbatim Data life plus DVD-R's (MCC), but recently I saw some 50% cheaper TDK's (TY) !!!

So, should I stay with the Verbatim's, or switching to the cheaper TDK's now... :confused:


Bye

[theReal]

IMO the only thing that is important is the manufacturer. So you could switch to TDK - but can you be sure the next batch will be TY as well?

There's hardly any media (except Verbatim) that is 98% made by a reliable manufacturer. At least if you stay with the more expensive jewel-case versions, not the spindles (do you call it like that in English? I guess you know what I mean...).

I've been hunting for good manufacturer-code-CDRs for years - what I learned from that was: never trust the label, always check the manufacturer code. But also I learned that manufacturers can change their quality... Ritek became a quite reliable quality manufacturer while Mitsui went from perfect to mediocre...:rolleyes:

[ppera2]

What about Smart Buy DVD's? Here I can buy them at really low price.