blank media quality

[radar]

hi everyone.

im looking for some input on your choice of quality dvd disk.thank you.:)

[killingspree]

this greatly depends on the burner you are using. for other peoples experiences who are using the same burner as you are, search for your dvd writer under http://www.videohelp.com/dvdwriters

kr
steVe

[MaxT]

Media with following media codes was tested and works great on my DVD Burner NEC ND-3500:

SONY D11
SONY 04D1
PRODISC S03
PRODISC S04
PRODISC S05
PRODISC S06
PRODISC S07
MCC01RG20
MCC02RG20
FUJIFILM02
CMC MAG AF1
CMC MAG AE1
CMC MAG AE2
CMC MAG AE3
CMC MAG AE4
CMC MAG AE5
OPTODISCR004
OPTODISCR005
OPTODISCR006
OPTODISCR007
OPTODISCR008
TY G01
RITEK G04
RITEK G05
RITEKM02
RITEKM03
RITEKM04
TTG02
TTG03
TTG04
TTG05
TTG06
CMC MAG F01
MXL RG02
MXL RG03
PRODISC F01
KIC01RG20
KIC01RG21
KIC01RG22
KIC02RG20
KIC03RG20

You can use DVD Identifier (http://dvd.identifier.cdfreaks.com/) to look up the code at your media.

[radar]

thank you very much for the quick respons,and the info.my burner is lite-on ldw-451s.anyone with the same burner and what disk have you used.

[callmeace]

I created some DVD-R backups in 2003, using some media purchased earlier in the year as a 'spindle' of 50. They were relatively cheap, but I assumed that this was just because they did not come with cases and because I was buying them online and in bulk; - I believed that the goods must still be sold as "fit for the purpose". They were sold as unbranded but the online place is quite major.

Anyway, I burned them, at 2x which is the discs rated speed, over the course of a couple of weeks using Nero version 6.x I believe (can't remember exact subversion from then) and I did verify afterwards. I also then checked that I could properly see the files in Windows and tested the zip files too, as I had most files as Zips. I then placed each DVD in a case and put them away safely - not near anything like Strong heat or chemicals or any such thing which I thought might harm them. I mean, this stuff I burnt was PRECIOUS, like scans of very old family pictures, and utilites and information which I had spent ages finding, collecting and sorting like over months. There was all kinds of stuff on these Discs (notice past tense? :( )

My burner was, & still is, an LG GMA-4020B

In the last week I have had two of these discs completely unreadable and one corrupted when I tried. I have checked for obvious scratches or fingerprints or dirt but there was nothing like this - I had kept them mear-immaculate and hardly accessed since I put them away, I gave a gentle clean and several retries, after the same failures I also tried lowering the drives' speed using Neros DriveSpeed from 'Maximum' to 1x. But it seems that my backups on these DVDs are lost! :(
On the two that are unreadable what happens is, the discs are put in and the drive light blinks for a while and then will go out - there is not the usual noises that one gets when a disc is put in and it reads it. If I click on the drive letter it asks me to please insert a disk into Drive.
For the corrupted discs, it did recognise the disc and I can get the drive contents up as per normal, but when I try to copy one of the zips it stops after a while and I get a read error CRC message. I did copy off the rest of the Disc contents though. After several attempts - including with a utility called Unstoppable Copier to copy the Zip, and many goes breathing on the disc and trying cleaning etc I actually broke the disc, I had tried gently flexing it slightly just a little bit as I had become desperate - and it actually snapped suddenly and very easily. That disc must have been very weak and brittle. The discs do feel very lightweight compared to other DVD and CD media which I have.

The dye colour is a sort of metallic Violet-Pink and I have noticed on inspection under a light that there are flaws and marks often in it on several of the discs. However, this includes on discs that read perfectly.

To end it there, I have used DVD Identifier version 3.6.2 from Feb 5th 2005 and it reports this crap media as being:

Vivastar <------ :(
and is rated for 2x

I am really unhappy that I lost such a lot of data that I had trusted was safe. I guess now I will in future back up everything twice using two different brand medias and put in two different places!
I will also check them maybe every 6 months? All I can say from my experience is 'Don't Buy Vivastar'
:(

Oh yea, I also did try a lens cleaner on the drive and all other discs that I tried (CDs and DVD-rs and normal DVDs) work fine as ever. I am going to try the two unrecognised DVDs in a different DVD drive when I can.

[Teegedeck]

From reading the meticulously executed tests in c't, my impression is that Verbatim DVD media seem to have a bit of qualitative advantage. But you should always select a lower burn-speed than what the media are certified for if you don't want to risk a coaster - this goes for all brands. Sad but true; advertising exerts some pressure to 'certify' media for a speed they don't work at reliably. Ricoh media are also very good, it depends on the manufacturer of your drive, as written above.

Don't risk your precious data for 'saving' some cents on media. At least for DVDs this is a bad deal.

[callmeace]

Hey Teegedeck, I want to ask you about the burning speed! :)

Are you saying that even if a disc verifies okay after having been burned, if it was burnt at a higher speed it is more likely for it to fail in the future. I mean greater risk of losing data in the future from a disc that was burnt at the max-rated speed.

Or is it the case that it doesn't matter what speed you burned at -once it is verified, But it is more likely that you will get coasters while burning at the higher speeds (while burning not afterwards I mean)

Sorry for the wording I hope I am understandable :o

[fewtch]

Some of it may depend on the burner as well... e.g. an old 4x burner might not burn well at 4x, and a current 16x burner not too well at 16x, but a 16x burner may do very well with 4x media at 4x.

Hope that made sense... :D Guess I mean to say that the burner probably plays a part, and using the max rated speed might be pushing things.

[Teegedeck]

Originally posted by callmeace
Hey Teegedeck, I want to ask you about the burning speed! :)

Are you saying that even if a disc verifies okay after having been burned, if it was burnt at a higher speed it is more likely for it to fail in the future. I mean greater risk of losing data in the future from a disc that was burnt at the max-rated speed.

Or is it the case that it doesn't matter what speed you burned at -once it is verified, But it is more likely that you will get coasters while burning at the higher speeds (while burning not afterwards I mean)

Sorry for the wording I hope I am understandable :o
As fewtch wrote above, the important thing is that media which are certified for burning at 16x speed may actually fail in 40% of all burning attempts at 16x speed (--> coaster), while burning at 12x speed would be sucessful in 100% of attempts.

The quality of the data should be OK if the disk is verified. Of course what verification doesn't tell you, is how hard the in-built error-correction of the DVD/drive combination had to kick in in order to read the data. No burn is absolutely flawless, but minor errors are normal and get corrected on the fly. Lower burn-speeds are no warranty for a further increase in accuracy of the burn. Cheap media though very probably burn with a high count of correctable errors, which may one day - disk getting scratched, or simply aging - through their sheer mass result in a zone with too many errors that thus is no longer correctable and lost. Again, it may happen with good media too, but it is less probable.

[callmeace]

Thanks for the answers.

I actually still have 22 unused of the Vivastar DVD-Rs, I am going to throw them in the bin. Infact I am going to enjoy snapping every single one of them in to pieces before I throw them in! :devil:

So from what I have read here:
I am going to buy a new DVD burner drive as it looks like mine may not have that good error correction.
I will buy some more expensive DVD-Rs and burn them at a slower speed than the max they are rated at, I suppose when I buy the new burner I could find out what media is recommended for it by the manufacturer? Plus of course what other users are recommending and make a pick. Verbatim & Ritek seem like popular choices.

For the existing Vivastar backed up discs that I can read, I will copy the contents off and re-burn them to the new discs! Twice! :sly: and put them in different places to store them.

thanks guys for listening, I was very upset about losing my data.

[callmeace]

Well, here is an update to say that I found a drive that did -eventually - read one of my discs that had gone unreadable in the first drive.

See, I had looked up on the internet for Data Recovery specialists that claim to be able to recover data off of corrupted and even no longer recognised discs of all kinds. So I was digging deep for the funds and preparing to post off my Unrecognised DVD-R when someone told me that all these places have is lot's of different DVD drives and would just try my disc in each one - they don't have any special machines that they will put my disc through to 'raw read' the information off (what I imagine in my mind). Anyway so I thought for the price perhaps I should buy myself a new drive :devil: if I could find one in the shops that read my unrecognised DVD-R?

Out of interest, I put my bad DVD-R into the standalone DVD video player and infact without seemingly any reading trouble it showed the picture that was on there so I was encouraged, it didn't show the zip files but I realised that was normal.

So I went to a PC supermarket with my money and the DVD-R and asked one of the shop guys that I wanted to buy a drive that could read this DVD-R, I knew they wanted the sale and hoped they would let me put my disc in some of the display machines. You know I even had thoughts that I could slip one of these guys some cash if they would let me copy and burn this DVD in the shop as a demonstration :D but anyway, they weren't a very helpful guy but told me to go over to the 'pc clinic', the person there took my disc in to one of the guys in the back room where I wasn't allowed to go. Now you can imagine I was not happy because I know these discs are very very fragile and I hoped the guy was being careful with it, but anyway after a while he cameback and calimed it worked fine straight away, he seemed to be scorning me. I asked him if I could see this, he said no I wasn't allowed in there, so I asked him what drive it had worked in and he told me it was an 'Emtrex'. So I asked him if I could buy one of these. Anyway, I bought on which was about (equivalent of) $100 U.S.A. and is a dual-layer burner and can read -R and +R etc. So I got home and indeed it was slow with the light blinking a lot but I could see my disc contents!!! Oh joy joy joy!!!! :) I copied everything to my computer and then verified test all the zips which are fine.

I don't mind telling you I had tears in my eyes that I could see my stuff again :)

I haven't used the drive for burning yet or anything else than looking at a few more of my DVD backups so I won't do anything like recommend it, but here is a link for info on this drive
http://www.allsupport.net/products/drw1016im.html

Edit: Is Emprex not Emtrex

[video_magic]

Another update, another disc from that batch can now not be read! :-(

This was the first DVD-R I wrote :(

, and no, the new drive is not my saviour this time, it doesn't read it. What happens is (with the new drive) it flickers the read light for a while and makes the 'grinding' noises that are normal, but when I try and access the disc when the noises and light flickering have stopped it says 'incorrect function'. Another drive says 'please insert a disc into...'

I have bought some new Discs and cases, I bought Maxell. So now I have to begin rescuing what I can and burning it all to the new discs... and then burn a copy of these new discs onto a second brand - I haven't decided what other brand to get.

:mad: But the sad thing is, I will have no peace of mind - I will always be wandering when I go to read them in the future if I will find that my data has got degraded and if I won't be able to read it anymore :( Roll on Blu-Ray or some other form of storage other than DVD :angry:

[smiller667]

Originally posted by video_magic
Roll on Blu-Ray or some other form of storage other than DVD :angry: LOL. Please get real. Once Bluray recordables come down to "budget" price levels, you will find just as many cr*p media as you get for dvd+-r these days ...

[video_magic]

You think so?

well I know with CDs - both factory pressed and recordables, they certainly don't seem to have lived up to their claims of lastibility and durability. Somebody somewhere, told me that there used to be a protective extra layer over a lot of discs (Imation or something like that?) which they took of to reduce costs.

Then there is this crap with DVDs.

So maybe, infact I suppose quite probably, you will be right :( bah!.

But then, I think the storage capacity of Blu-Ray is going to be standardised at around 30 - 35 GBs , so I suppose I could burn 3x as many copies just to be safer :o

But overall, the consumer - poor me & you - will be the losers and I think it's a real cheek that the RIAA or MPAA and people like that get a royalties percentage from blank media even though they try not to let us backup, and a lot of the times the DVD recordables aren't even used for movie data, and then the discs a lot of the time don't even retain the data properly for very long (in my experience it's like a 14% failure I think).

Not to be a doom-sayer, but I am in a really foul mood because of having lost my back-ups again and I've got some videos that I would rather be getting on with putting on to discs, but I'm almost losing the heart to burn more stuff y'know? But I suppose some people want me to feel like that? :sly: Hmmmm...

[ammck55]

This thread started out with radar asking for advice on media selection, and has devolved into, well, I don't know exactly what it is, by this time. This is a good example of a thread getting off topic....more than once.

Although most of the content in this thread speaks to media, you guys with specific problems really needed to post your questions/comments in separate threads, or rather, one of the Mods should have split this at least once, but it's really too far fragmented, by now, for this to do any real good.

This is not to say that you fellas don't have legitimate beefs, but it's just way too crowded in here at the moment. :)

The original question was about what kind of media to use, not about problems experienced with specific brands, or hardware issues. Let's get back on track, or discuss separate issues in the new threads that they deserve. Or not........

ammck55

[radar]

sorry
:D

[CWR03]

I bought one of the Emprex burners myself just before the 16X dual layer units came out, and I usually use cheap media as long as I'm not archiving anything valuable or important. For such an inexpensive drive it's been nearly flawless in about 300 burns with the cheap media (GQ brand disks, on sale almost every Monday for about 30 cents a disc). One thing I hadn't considered is its longevity. I only recenty found out that the laser doesn't really change anything solid, but rather does something with the dye. It makes sense that a cheap dye will fade or bleed and cause read problems or data loss.