DVD burner laser reliability

Don't know about that but I always burn at a lower than maximum speed because apparently the "image" is burnt deeper and supposed to be less liable to long term temp/humidity/corrosion corruption of the stored disc data.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

Agree there, i have tested this on some sample dvdr's and after burning the same image at 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x i could already see the imprint on the disc getting much lighter. Let alone burning at higher speeds, often the resulting copy would either not work or burning would fail. Fast cd or dvd burning is a scam, burn always everything at the lowest speed possible. Friends complained about discs degrading too soon, mine still work, same brand but burned at 1x

Bart Bervoets

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You can always go out and buy another burner if the laser fails but you cannot necessarily replace those family album pics.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

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Could you enlarge on you could "see the imprint on the disc" Was that lining up one of each

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

The quality of the burner and media have a lot more to do with longevity than what speed you use to burn. Quality burners today use variable lasers to adjust burn depth according to speed and media.

If you're more comfortable burning at 1x, hey it's a free world. All I can say is, I have dozens of DVD-Rs going on five years old that were burned at 8x and I haven't had a problem reading any of them.

"Just you wait ****** *****, just you wait!" ( Elisa in "My Fair Lady")

Cheers

Stanislaw

You could see it visible on a samsung burner, not sure which model. The imprint would be from deep dark to very light and almost not visible. That's what i had, all my 1x discs work, regardless of what media i use, only for cd i swear by dark green TDK's, i don't have shares there but they never let me down. Other brands, cdr's are usually crappier then dvdr's. Just my 2 cents

Bart Bervoets

Using 1/2 or 1/4 of maximum speed, and no rewritable media. This seems rather safe.

On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 10:06:54 +0100, "N Cook" put finger to keyboard and composed:

If that's the lowest available speed, then that's what I normally use. I don't need to sit and wait for it to burn.

This is merely conjecture, but I would think that the edges of the pits and lands would be better defined at low burning speeds. Firstly, I'd expect some rise and fall time issues during the switching of the laser. Secondly, I'd expect tracking and focus issues at high speeds. I'd also imagine that burning would be more consistent in CLV rather CAV mode, assuming these options were available. In CLV mode the laser power would the same at all points on the surface.

Then there's the question of whether the spin motor would last significantly longer at lower speeds.

- Franc Zabkar

On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 09:50:21 +0200, "Bart Bervoets" put finger to keyboard and composed:

That's a worry. I would have expected that the firmware would have adjusted the laser power for a consistent burn at all speeds. Apparently not.

- Franc Zabkar

Cheaper models don't have an adjustable laser, and for the cost of ones that do (BenQ, NEC etc, around 35-40 clams) there's no excuse for using one that doesn't.

Hi!

I don't know about a consensus, but I've had the best luck staying between

Generally I burn things at 12X when longevity isn't that important.

Buying media that's rated for the speed at which you will be burning is also important. CD-Rs will generally allow burning at any speed, but going too fast can result in errors. CD-RWs and DVD blanks generally do enforce the maximum supported burning speed.

William

Part of the problem with playing back home recorded disc media, is that the technology to record the data, is different. A number of times, pits and lands have been mentioned in this thread, but these only exist for factory pressed media. Home burnt media rely on changing the physical state of a dye layer in the disc, which alters its reflectivity. This is not as good as having silvered pits and lands. The reflectivity of home burn discs is not as good as pressed discs in the first place, which degrades the relative signal to noise ratio of the recovered data. Add to this, the fact that you are firing either a near infra red or visible red laser at a disc that may have a blue or green or purple dye layer, and you are soon in trouble at getting reliable reading, if the record process is anything less than as perfect as it can be.

For this reason, I would suggest that there will be a particular brand / colour of disc that best suits the particular drive or player that the disc is to be played back in, and a maximum speed that that results in a high enough signal to noise ratio for that disc / player combination, to ensure reliable long-term readability.

To pursue the original question, if a range of discs recorded at different speeds on a drive, exhibit a range of colour densities over the recorded section, then this would indicate that the drive does not have the capability to control the laser write power, and there should therefore be no longevity improvement issue for the laser life, by writing at lower speeds. If a range of discs exhibit a broadly similar colour density for a range of writing speeds, then this would indicate that the drive does have speed adaptive power control, in which case, the laser life would almost certainly be increased by burning at lower speeds.

Arfa

With drives as cheap as they are, who cares? I think I paid $37 for mine including shipping, it'll be long obsolete by the time the laser wears out.

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So would a good policy be the following for any recordable media, ie audio,video and data. For a new media brand of use Burn the same data at the minimum , maximum and 1 or 2 intermediate speeds on 3 or 4 discs, label them specificaly for their ?x speeds for later checking on environmental degradation/ data corruption. If there is an observable gradation in the appearance of the 3 or 4 discs then use a lower speed setting for recording on all the rest of the batch/make. ?

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

I'd say that about covers it except that if you are recording on a computer drive to play back on a regular household drive - hifi Cd player or DVD player, or home cinema rig, it would probably be worth seeing which dye colour your player responds best to. How long it takes the player to " load " the disc, before a top menu page or TOC is displayed, is usually a pretty good indication of how much it is struggling to read a disc.

Arfa

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A couple of weeks after Sam Goldwasser got an honourable mention in this UK newspaper I made an appearance.

From previous weeks query

"Spoilt CDs and DVDs

What will clean sticky finger marks off discs that no longer work after a child has handled them? Stanley Russell

JS: A very small amount of mild soap and clean water will generally do the job. However, if it's a case of rescuing a number of non-working discs, it is probably worth buying a circular CD cleaning kit with a spray-on cleaning fluid - Maplin stocks one for £2.99 - or a packet of moist disc wipes. As you'd expect, Mr Clean PC

You should use a lint-free or microfibre cloth that won't leave fibres behind: an old well-washed hanky might do at a pinch, but don't use paper tissues, which are both abrasive and disintegrate. Also, make sure you don't grind any bits of grit into the disc surface. But even badly scratched discs can often be rescued using special machines that grind away a little of the surface. This is often a problem with PlayStation 2 discs so your local games shop may have a deal with a company that offers the service."

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 03:49:59 GMT, James Sweet put finger to keyboard and composed:

It's not just a matter of replacing the drive, you may need to replace the software as well. For example, the software that was bundled with my first LG burner (which is still working) would not see the replacement LG drive. I had to install (and learn how to use) the latter's own bundled software.

Something else you may want to consider are DVDRs which are not yet throwaway appliances.

- Franc Zabkar

Ha! That's a matter of opinion, Franc ! I have to say that I think non computer-based DVD recording is the worst piece of technology to hit the market in many a long year. I see probably six or seven of these hateful pieces of crap a week, and probably about 2 or 3 of those actually fix. For the rest of them, the cost of replacement parts is so high, if they are even available, as to make most of the insurance companies that we are doing this work on behalf of, just write them off. Many of the manufacturers won't even supply info for them. Panasonic won't even talk to you about them, unless you are a DSN dealer - and there's not many that can either afford that, or have the inclination to take on the all-comers equipment list that you have to, in order to gain that status.

The faults that you get reported on them, defy even understanding, let alone fixing, and the manufacturer's service departments are no help with them for the most part either. I regularly see faults like " When recording after

I will be heartily glad when this nonsense technology dies out for home time-shift recording, and the much more reliable HDD recorders take over completely. Interesting though, that when DVD recording technology is working with a computer based software platform, it is for the most part, totally reliable ...

Arfa