Burned DVD discs going bad?

[Antoneo]

I was just wondering if any of you guys have experienced your burned DVD discs going bad. Did the reason turn out to be cheap media, bad burner, storage conditions, or too high of a burn speed?

Also, how do you guys know if the burn was successfully burned with no errors? I see people talking about errors per burn and never understood how they arrived at those figures. If the data verification in Nero checks out fine, the disc is good?

I'm a DVD burning newbie.

EDIT:
Ok this data verification process takes too long. Grrrrrr.. wonder if it's worth it.

 

[V00D00]

You can check some other stuff like PI/PO, (Parity Inner, ParityOuter) I'm pretty sure only Lite-On drives support it, and you need a special utility to scan the disks for the errors.

If Nero says all the data is there, then all the data is readable. That's all it means.

I've never had a disk go bad. The first disk I burned was only 3 years ago though. I've always used some of the best quality media. (ie. Verbatim)

 

[Antoneo]

Hrmm, I'm using a NEC3500a and Ridata disks. Burned at 4x even when Nero kept defaulting to 8x.

 

[Baked]

There will always be errors, there's no such thing as a perfect burn. However, a combination of good burner, good firmware, and good media will produce the least error, expressed in C1 and C2 errors.

The newest version of Nero CD Speed (cdspeed2000.com) includes a Disc Quality Test which allows you to use any DVD burner to test the quality of a burned DVD. Lite-On DVD burners have an exclusive error scanning program called KProbe. Do a search on club.cdfreaks.com and you'll see extensive media quality scans using various DVD burners, media, and firmware.

As for when they'll got bad, that all depends on the quality of the media. Good brands like Taiyo Yuden have a longer life span before data writen on it deteriorates, while cheap brands will go bad in less than a year. YMMV of course, since some people swear their $2 for 10/pack DVD is as good as TY and never goes bad... right...

 

[V00D00]

Are they 8x disks? If so you should be fine at 8x. And some media that burns at 4x can burn flawlessly at 8x. It's all encoded into the drives firmware. So if nero says you can burn it at 8x, then it is in fact safe to do so.

 

[Markfw]

I allways burn DVDs at 2x on my 16x burner, and CD's at 8x or 16x on my 52x burner. People may not believe me, but a slower burn allways works better.

Best proof I have : At my company last summer (or the one before, time flies) we had a bad virus outbreak. We had to shut down the entire network. Manually burn CD's from one uninfected, but connected PC, then he used his laptop to burn using a copy of my master (burned at 1xoff-line), and he burned copies at full speed (32x) and I burned my copies at 16x. 3/4 of his were unreadable in most of the PC's we tried it on, and ALL of mine worked fine. We had to distribute the CD's to 100 co-workers, who each cleaned 10-20 PC's a day for 3 days. (we had about 7000 just in Oregon, but not all were done in those 3 days).

My personal experience bears this out.

 

[Antoneo]

V00D00:The Ridata media I bought is 4x, but I like to go on the safe side (paranoid?) Thanks for the CDRfreaks link Baked; I visited that place a year back when I bought a faster cd burner but forgot it since.

Markfw900: I can sort of relate as well, though I'm not sure if my experience is still applicable with today's technology. Back when CD burners were maxing at 8x, I had a 6x burner and I noticed that the music cds that were burned at 2x worked in my friend's cd player. It was the most curious thing. I have also seen threads here in GH where people have encountered the same problem.

 

[Antoneo]

Hrmm, do DVD burners have a form of burnproof as well? Their caches are too small for even a second of DVD burning at 4x so I'm guessing they do.

 

[V00D00]

Yeah, pretty much all dvd burns have some kind of cache protection.

It's defineatly not true that it is better to burn a DVD at 2x over 8x. You can easily see when you scan a disk with the C1 & C2 as well as PI/PO that it really doesn't matter all that much.

I did a DVD duplication project for a bunch of DVDs I authored where I burned about 600 DVDS in the course of a few months. My drives got a good workout, and every disk I've ever made was 100% playable. (I have 3 NEC 2500A DVD burners) And that was burning 2 at a time at 8x, and 3 at a time at 4x.

Laptop drives are not as good as drives found in normal computers, and you can't just judge based on that one experience. I've never burned a bad CD in all the years I've ever owned a cd (and dvd) burner. It's VERY dependant on what kind of media you use.

 

[fixxxer0]

Originally posted by: Baked
There will always be errors, there's no such thing as a perfect burn. However, a combination of good burner, good firmware, and good media will produce the least error, expressed in C1 and C2 errors.

The newest version of Nero CD Speed (cdspeed2000.com) includes a Disc Quality Test which allows you to use any DVD burner to test the quality of a burned DVD. Lite-On DVD burners have an exclusive error scanning program called KProbe. Do a search on club.cdfreaks.com and you'll see extensive media quality scans using various DVD burners, media, and firmware.

As for when they'll got bad, that all depends on the quality of the media. Good brands like Taiyo Yuden have a longer life span before data writen on it deteriorates, while cheap brands will go bad in less than a year. YMMV of course, since some people swear their $2 for 10/pack DVD is as good as TY and never goes bad... right...

nero cd/dvd speed wont do error tests on my nec3500a.... the buttons greyed out.

if i right click the chart and go into options it comes back, but when i press it i get an error saying unable initialize test

 

[V00D00]

Yeah, not all drives support the feature. NEC is one of those companies that for one reason or another doesn't feel like putting into the firmware.

 

[0roo0roo]

burn at rated speed.

 

[Cerb]

I've not had a bad burn since burnproof. However, discs will go bad over time, and sometimes burners don't like some media.

Taiyo Yuden CD/DVDs or MCC CDs have been able to withstand tons of abuse over several years and still keep readong, though.

As far as errors, CD and DVD media have the data in extremely small tracks. Built in to the media is ECC information. The disc isn't perfect, the leaser isn't perfect, the motors aren't perfect, etc.. As long as there are few enough errors, and of the right kind, that they can be corrected without re-reading a part of the disc, all is well. If you want a disc to last a long time, though, all that info on what media gets what results at what speed on what burner can be helpful, as fewer initial read errors will mean it take more light scratches and such over time. A 4.37GB DVD disc has more than that on it, but a fair amount is reserved for ECC blocks.

Also, better media and better burnswill result in a longer useful life and better compatibility with older readers and set-top readers that don't have PC guts. Test this with your drive if you want. My Lite-On, FI, makes much better CD burns at 16x than 40x (I haven't had a need to burn a DVD yet...), regardless of media. WHat constitutes a better burn than normal depends on the drive and media. Usually it won't matter, though (something to work on when doing serious archives). Note that DVDs have better error correction, so compatibility is far more dependent on media than burner.

 

[eelw]

I've had my Phillips set top DVD+RW recorder for almost 4 years now. And I've had my Mitsumi DVD+RW drive for 3 years. I have used Verbatim +RWs, Mitsumi +Rs and +RWs , Memorex +Rs , and BenQ +Rs. No problem with reading any burnt disks over the past few years. Some disks are stored in my desk drawer. Others are on the entertainment shelf beside the TV.

 

[Eug]

Cheap discs are often unreliable. I refuse to buy cheapo DVD-R now, esp. for high-speed burns. And by cheapo, I include Ridata, because I've had too many problems with them in the past.

Oh and every single burn I do is verified. And even if the burn verifies normally, I find that cheap discs go bad far quicker than better name brand ones.

 

[imported_asfd]

ridata is decent media. I used it all the time, never had a problem. It depends on your
burner.

 

[stars]

I think the method we use to store the discs after burning play a major role on there lifespan.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: asfd
ridata is decent media. I used it all the time, never had a problem. It depends on your
burner.

3 different burners. The early Ridata stuff sucked. The current stuff is better, but it's still not up to the standards of Apple or Mitsui media for instance IMO.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Optical media eventually goes bad, some of it horrifyingly quickly. Freshly burned discs with high error levels tend to develop more severe problems more quickly as they age. Best thing you can do is try to minimize those errors by using quality media and burners that are compatible with each other, and then take care of the discs by storing them safely.

Getting good quality media isn't a 100% guarantee either, I've run across Taiyo CD's from 2-3 years ago that have developed unrecoverable blocks. I've only been burning DVD for about a year, haven't noticed problems...yet.

 

[Antoneo]

Hrmm, I'm surprised that Ridata would be consided cheap media, though your personal experiences would be much more valid than my assumptions. I just checked on newegg and the prices for Verbatim media are marginally more expensive than Ridata. Thanks for the tip, next time I won't hesitate to spend a bit more to have safe of mind. Are Ridata and Ritek the company? I think I was looking at Ritek DVD discs at my friend's place and noticed that his Ri---- discs had what I would describe as uneven dye spread and occasional splotches across the the writable side of the disc. My friend said they still worked though, I was looking through some of mine and didn't notice that.

One more thing that puzzles me is that some of my friend's burned DVDs have "cyclic redundancy" errors when copying files from them. Now, on my laptop's DVD drive, the file would not copy over correctly, but on say a desktop DVDrom drive, the file reads fine and successfully copies over. Have you guys experienced this as well, and if so what turned out to be the problem?

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I allways burn DVDs at 2x on my 16x burner, and CD's at 8x or 16x on my 52x burner. People may not believe me, but a slower burn allways works better.

Best proof I have : At my company last summer (or the one before, time flies) we had a bad virus outbreak. We had to shut down the entire network. Manually burn CD's from one uninfected, but connected PC, then he used his laptop to burn using a copy of my master (burned at 1xoff-line), and he burned copies at full speed (32x) and I burned my copies at 16x. 3/4 of his were unreadable in most of the PC's we tried it on, and ALL of mine worked fine. We had to distribute the CD's to 100 co-workers, who each cleaned 10-20 PC's a day for 3 days. (we had about 7000 just in Oregon, but not all were done in those 3 days).

My personal experience bears this out.

Me on the other hand, I've burned hundreds of discs, at home, work, etc.
All working fine, cept some old crappy ones burned on crappy media many years ago.

Sounds to me like you got burned(no pun intended) by either a crappy burner or crappy media.

 

[Zepper]

Remember that media for burning consist of at least four layers of material. If you don't allow your blanks to equilibrate to room temp for at least a day after you receive them in this kind of cold weather can cause the layers to shift during burning. And excessive flexing of the disks can cause the layers to shift after burning. Most of the good burner companies have lists of recommended media - if you stick with those and don't burn overspeed, and handle them carefully after burning, you should have good results.
. Plextor also has good software for testing disk quality.
.bh.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Originally posted by: Antoneo
Hrmm, I'm surprised that Ridata would be consided cheap media, though your personal experiences would be much more valid than my assumptions. I just checked on newegg and the prices for Verbatim media are marginally more expensive than Ridata. Thanks for the tip, next time I won't hesitate to spend a bit more to have safe of mind. Are Ridata and Ritek the company? I think I was looking at Ritek DVD discs at my friend's place and noticed that his Ri---- discs had what I would describe as uneven dye spread and occasional splotches across the the writable side of the disc. My friend said they still worked though, I was looking through some of mine and didn't notice that.

Verbatim media (if it's Japanese made) has a high reputation generally. Last I saw, the CD/DVDR messageboards seemed to have soured somewhat on the Ritek Ridatas. You can look into that at places like cdfreaks and cdrlabs.com. I've burned a lot of Ritek G04 DVD-R and the last batch I got 6+ months ago from newegg had some issues similar to what you describe, looking at the discs from the side the edges were very sloppy and blotchy with what appeared to be dye overspill. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their manufacturing quality. I'm now using Fuji Taiyo Yuden DVD-R since I can snag them at bestbuy on the cheap sometimes.

One more thing that puzzles me is that some of my friend's burned DVDs have "cyclic redundancy" errors when copying files from them. Now, on my laptop's DVD drive, the file would not copy over correctly, but on say a desktop DVDrom drive, the file reads fine and successfully copies over. Have you guys experienced this as well, and if so what turned out to be the problem?

Well always check for smudges first But failing that, I would guess that the discs have some pretty bad errors, and your laptop drive is not very good at reading discs like that. If that's the case, there's a distinct possibility that those problem areas of the discs will degrade until eventually no drive can read them.

 

[Zepper]

Laptops don't live in the best of environments, usually. Perhaps the drive has been damaged thru mishandling or the lenses need cleaning. I find that a lens cleaning often does wonders - they don't call 'em 'optical drives' fer nothin. Keeping your drives' firmware up to date is also good for media compatibility. Also take a look at the burned side of your disk - if you can easily tell the difference between the burned and unburned parts, then your drive should have an easier time reading it. Some media is very low contrast, meaning more difficult for drives to read.
.bh.

 

[Antoneo]

Yeah, it could be that my friends were using crappy media, they would do that. :| My laptop drive is used very rarely, which was one of reasons why I was puzzled. Clean optics and disc was in while I was trying to copy, but when I noticed that the same disc would not work in my friend's laptop (same IBM) I thought it was a bad burn. Until my friend tried copying the files using his desktop DVD drive. Thanks for the tips, I didn't know some of them

Before I try this myself, perhaps some of you guys have. I don't run a hyperthreaded setup and only have 512MB of RAM. Would it be safe to burn DVDs while running F@H, listening to winamp, d/ling using bittorrent and emule, web browsing all at the same time? I checked for a "burn proof feature" or buffer underrun technology and no drives I've looked at mention it, let alone mine...