Faster Merdia - When, Where?

LunarMist

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,497
Location
USA
I see many of the 12x and 16x DVD writers for sale, but the blank media is only 8x. When will the faster media be available for general consumptions? I don;t want to suffer the extra expaneso of a 16x burner which will not be used at full speed until is it nearly obsolete.
 
Merdia was kind of funny. "Merde" means shit in French. I guess merdia could be the new term for cheapo disks that end up as coasters.
 
I need some good, but not perfect media. I burn data to disc as spanned RAR files and then check the CRC. A 5-year shelf life would be acceptable.
 
Because of the way that DVD media is manufactured it looks like it could easily be more reliable than CD's Simply because the reflective surface is enclosed in the plastic and should not be prone to scratches or delamination.

However, their isn't much evidence to the length of time data will stay on a burned DVD disc reliably. My oldest discs are about 6 months old and they still work so that is a good sign... but I think we'll have to see the technology wait a bit longer before we can truely tell.

From my experience with CD burning I stick to Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden discs. cdrlabs.com often conducts burn quality tests which can tell you what media will burn with the least amount of errors with your burner. This may not equate to better longevity though.


On another note, one thing that I am doing to ensure the integrity of my DVD backups above and beyond CRC testing is to create parity archives, AKA PAR files.

The easiest way to think of it is RAID 3 for zip/tar/rar files. You basically create a parity disc that contains enough information about all your other discs so that if one of them dies you can recover the data from your parity file and remaining archive files.

For zip/tar/rar sets where files are similarly sized (IE, each file is 4.5GB excepft for the last file) I would recommend PAR1. Easy to create/recover in both windows and linux. PAR allows you to create recovery files based on your needs. If you want to create parity in case of 1 disc failure you'll end up with a 1disc sized parity file, if you want to have coverage for 2 discs failure it takes 2 discs worth of space for your parity file and so on. Remember that this parity file allows recovery if any of the discs happen to fail, so it is much more space concious than a mirror.

Right now I'm using 1 parity disc on my backup set which consumes 4 DVDs of space. If I grow to require 8 discs I'm pretty sure I'll find a larger media or crete 2 parity discs.
 
LunarMist said:
I see many of the 12x and 16x DVD writers for sale, but the blank media is only 8x. When will the faster media be available for general consumptions? I don;t want to suffer the extra expaneso of a 16x burner which will not be used at full speed until is it nearly obsolete.
Click to expand...

Apparently most of the 8x rated stuff burns at 12x. I'll have to get some to see for myself. With the NEC 3500 @ around $80 I don't see the price premium as extravagant.
 
I've had a lousy time getting anything to work over 8x. Normally I buy Verbatim DVD+Rs for my personal needs, but I've tried Memorex and generic "8x" discs. The Memorex discs my LiteOn drive wants to use at 2.4x (ouch), the generics (Prodisc?) underrun if I try 8x, but work OK at 4x.

Guess it might be the LiteOn drives but they haven't let me down so far.

Why could I get dual layer discs cheaper before the drives came out?
 
Mercutio said:
Why could I get dual layer discs cheaper before the drives came out?
Click to expand...

In my opinion it was probably a conspiracy. With low advertised media prices, people pushed for the drives to come out. Why wouldn't they want to use the new widget since the media is reasonably priced? The drives come out, and now people need the media, so manufacturers know they can raise the price, and people will still pay the cost.
 
Blake:

That's way too complicated for the occasional, but large backups. I plan to send out about 100-120GB per month. Right now I have an old 4x Pioneer DVD and a 12x generic DVD which is burning the 8x media at 8x. Unfortunately the 8x and 4x on the same channel can only burn at about 4x each reliably, and copying back is slower than with only one drive. I have an external DVD/CD-RW that I use for verification, but would like to go with a couple of 16x units – one internal and one external.
 
actually lunar, it's pretty easy. In windows you can simply drag and drop your files into smartPAR and calculate the parity. burn the parity file along with your other discs.

If your files are not zip or rar sets and instead are just misc files you can use quickPAR to calculate parity in a similar fashion.
 
Mercutio said:
I've had a lousy time getting anything to work over 8x. Normally I buy Verbatim DVD+Rs for my personal needs, but I've tried Memorex and generic "8x" discs. The Memorex discs my LiteOn drive wants to use at 2.4x (ouch), the generics (Prodisc?) underrun if I try 8x, but work OK at 4x.

Guess it might be the LiteOn drives but they haven't let me down so far.

Why could I get dual layer discs cheaper before the drives came out?
Click to expand...

The Memorex 4x rated stuff works at 8x for me in the NEC 3500. At least the spindles of the white printable ones.
 
LunarMist said:
I see many of the 12x and 16x DVD writers for sale, but the blank media is only 8x. When will the faster media be available for general consumptions? I don;t want to suffer the extra expaneso of a 16x burner which will not be used at full speed until is it nearly obsolete.
Click to expand...

Apparently CircuitCity has 16x DVD+R spindles from Verbatim available, around $35 for a 25 pack.
 
Thanks! So which DVD burners should I order to take advantage of the high speeds? I prefer models that do not eject the tray to perform verification.
 
LunarMist said:
Thanks! So which DVD burners should I order to take advantage of the high speeds? I prefer models that do not eject the tray to perform verification.
Click to expand...

That's usually an option in your burning software as I have not encountered a drive where that was mandatory since the 4x 2x ?x CD burning days.
 
What about this 16x DVD±R drive? Is it a good performer or there something better in stock? I need to order a couple of burners in about 11 hours, thanks.
 
That's the one I'm using. There's not many out there with 16x DVD+R and 4x DVD+R DL capability. Local CC didn't have any of the 16x DVD+R media in stock, I'll have to order online.
 
Thanks, I placed the order. I also picked up a 25-pack of the Verbatim discs at the Circuit City. I could not believe that store - a zoo with a lot of crap merchandise. And what about the clueless and annoying salespeople; where do they find them? I mean, who needs a saleperson that can only regurgitate the specs listed on a box and can barely speak English anyway?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top