Best brand for optical media (CD/DVD)

K

Kenworth

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 31, 2007
Messages
2,141
I have read a little bit on the internet about the best brand for optical media being these obscurely named companies that are really sold under this other company which is really sold under some other company and so on. I don't burn much but of course I have a burner just in case (Lite-On mentioned in other thread in this forum...). But if I buy a 50pk spindle I would still like to make sure I am purchasing quality for when I do need to burn. I typically have about 50 cd's on hand and would figure 50 dvd's would be good cache since my parents and siblings can't be trusted with my thumb drives.

So who makes the best cd/dvd media? I have seen so many names I don't recognize like Taiyo Yuden, Ritek, Pro Scan, etc. which in reality was the Verbatims and Memorex's I was using anyway. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
 
Best advice I can offer:

Regardless of the brand of media you get, even with TY and Verbatim (if you actually get that specific media, Verbatim branded products are regularly TY manufactured, amazingly), don't burn above half the rated speed of the media.

I'll say that again: regardless of the rated speed of the media itself (16x, 18x, etc) don't burn it at higher than half that rated speed. If it's 16x media, don't burn it past 8x; you can do some test burns at 12x and verify them if you want using some software (Lite-On drives are arguably the best for burn quality testing) like K-Probe and see just how well the drives and the media work together.

Doesn't matter if it's a 16x burner, or some lightning fast 24x brand new drive from Lite-On, Plextor, Pioneer, whoever, the suggestion stands.

If you're serious about using the optical media for backups that matter and you want the best archival quality you're going to get, it takes three things:

- damned good media (and you can find it with a guide like the one above from GJSNeptune's link)
- damned good burner (CDFreaks.com aka http://www.myce.com/ nowadays) is THE PLACE to go for optical media reviews and extensive testing)
- burning at half the rated speed of the media and also doing a verify pass on every single burn - yes it takes longer but you get feedback on the quality of the burn right then and there and not 2 years later when you have to have that data and discover the burn was bad from day 1

There are people at CDFreaks that go out and buy 50 packs of DVD media and burn every single one of them just for testing burners and the media itself. I find that a bit insane personally but, they are providing some incredible amounts of data on what is worth your money and what is best avoided at all costs.
 
Outstanding advice as well Bahamut. I am not one of those burn masters like some of the guys you refer to but to minimize coasters I will scale back on the burn and leave it at a 10x or probably 8x just to make sure. Whenever I burn I am in no hurry so it isn't really a sacrifice for me.

Lots of tools to check the media itself too. It will be interesting to see what my current crop shows for codes and such.
 
Can't go wrong with Taiyo Yuden. CDFreaks was/is a wealth of information. I used to frequent the place when CDs were the "in" thing and TY was always held in high regard. They even had programs to detect what make the disc was just by letting the drive analyze it. Not sure if they have the same thing for DVDs now.
 
ImgBurn and many other apps (including Nero) can tell the actual manufacturer of the media since it's encoded on the discs themselves, not too difficult to find. The basic rule is: the brand name on the disc != who actually made it, not even in Verbatim's case...

I've got a stack of Verbatim DVD+R I got at Fry's a few weeks ago (100 pack for $15, was a huge drop in price on sale so I snatched a cake box while I could) and they're TY media - Verbatim labeled and branded, but the media was made by Taiyo Yuden... and they're great discs as expected. Did one test burn in my Lite-On primary burner and got a 98% quality score after testing, one of the highest scores I've ever had.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top