I NEED GOOD DISCS!!

[BloodAngel]

Title capitalized for emphasis.

I recently bought a stack of RiDATA "16x" DVDs from Newegg, and have now witnessed just how much they suck. I mean, they suck. Hard. People here would be impressed at how much they suck.

First off, to start the nonsense, when Nero comes up I see the maximum burning speed for these discs reduced to 12x. On EVERY one of them. That's okay, I asked a friend about this, and he says something about "calibration problem", which I just pass off as a manufacturer's mistake. Turns out that mistake would just grow bigger.

I then start the burning. First two discs come out okay, though when I copy tested them the writing speed was slightly slower, but that's a result of Nero burning at 12x. Third disc, within the first five seconds of copying, CRC ERROR. I throw it off as a defective DVD, every stack comes with at least one or two. I put in the fourth disc and copy test it again, CRC error on the fourth file. Fifth disc, CRC error again...

So, I'm going to continue sifting through these until I finally find an intact disc, but I doubt that they're going to get much better. Can someone link me to a stack of good-quality 16x DVDs? I use DVD+R, no dual layers. I simply don't trust these things now...

Thanks very much.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I used to use RiDATA's, but heard that they switched to a shit manufacturer and stopped. Verbatim's are quite good right now. I'm about 1/3 of the way through a 50-pack of them with no errors yet.

Maxell and Taiyo Yuden are the only 2 brands that you can always blindly trust with no research, but they're more expensive.

[Gerard_Paloma]

I second the Taiyo Yuden recommendation. I've tried a handful of different brands, and TY is the only one that I've never made a coaster with.

[Uraniun235]

I always buy Taiyo Yuden DVDs.

[InnocentBystander]

I've got a stack of RiData DVD+Rs, I've only burned a couple of them as backups, but haven't had a problem (can't recall the write speed). I've also got a stack of Memorex CDR's that I've been going through for the past two months, slowly, no problems. I find the best way to get optical disks is to head over to staples or circuit city, they always have a brand or two which is on sale for less than 10 bucks, never had any sort of problem purchasing like that, I could just be lucky.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The main thing to know about burnable media is that companies switch manufacturers all the time, so if you bought a 50 pack and they work great, another 50 pack from the same company might be total shit the next time. Either do a little research each time you need new media, or buy Taiyo Yuden / Maxell.

[Uraniun235]

Agreed.

The thing about TY is that they are a burnable media manufacturer. You know what the source is every time you buy TY.

And it's a good source.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Verbatim

[Datana]

Top choice are easily Taiyo Yuden discs, if you can get hold of them (I've found price and availability tend to fluctuate quite a bit on this brand, but the quality is always top rate). Maxells are decent, provided that they're actually Maxells or TYs (Maxell can be either their own, rebranded TYs, or rebranded Riteks and Ricohs). Mitsubishis are also fairly good, provided they come from a Japanese plant (these are kind of rare outside of Asia, though).

TDK used to be good until they switched to being rebranded CMCs (CMC and Princo are probably the two worst brands). Verbatims are an utter crapshoot -- I've found CMCs, Mitsubishis, and Riteks all in a single pack of DVD+Rs once.

[General Zod]

I've never had problems with Maxell or Verbatim discs, and I usually go with those brands myself.