Optical drive stuff

[time]

First, a philosophical article from 2002 that helps a bit with perspective on the limitations of archiving mediums.

Optical media companies talk up life expectancy - something of a conflict of interest, unfortunately. Officially, the best CD-R media is good for 100 years, DVD+R for at least 30 years. That's under perfect storage conditions; you need to divide that by 3 or 4 for normal conditions and more for harsh environments.

I found this useful summary of current knowledge of DVD life expectancy. It's very well researched.

 

[time]

And on a slightly related note, here's rip accuracy statistics from thousands of CD and DVD drives.

I converted it to error rates and found the medians to eliminate outliers; it gives you some indication of a manufacturer's consistency. I also included what percentage of models managed to achieve an average error rate of less than 3%.

[b]Manufacturer  MedianError  Under 3%[/b]
LiteOn           2.7 %        65 %
Optiarc          4.4 %        19 %
Pioneer          2.5 %        75 %
Plextor          2.2 %        84 %

I didn't have time to calculate LG, but it looks roughly similar to Optiarc (Sony).

 

[tazwegion]

100 years is a nice optimum serviceable lifespan (CD-R), I don't suppose you have any data on the use of HDD as an infrequent (offline) storage media (for comparison)?

 

[ddrueding]

I don't suppose you have any data on the use of HDD as an infrequent (offline) storage media (for comparison)?

I suspect I have some drives in a box somewhere that haven't been touched for at least 10 years. I suspect that Tony has some much older. If it passes a checkdisk, that means it kept it's data, no?

 

[time]

I didn't have time to calculate LG, but it looks roughly similar to Optiarc (Sony).

Correction, it's between LiteOn and Optiarc:

[b]Manufacturer  MedianError  Under 3%[/b]
Plextor          2.2 %        84 %
Panasonic        2.3 %        81 %
Pioneer          2.5 %        75 %
LiteOn           2.7 %        65 %
LG               3.2 %        45 %
Optiarc          4.4 %        19 %

 

[Mercutio]

Of course, that's 100 years for archival media. I suspect that the sort of discs most people buy for data storage (as opposed to audio or video, which have different error correcting schemes) probably exhibit bit rot after just a couple years.

 

[CougTek]

Correction, it's between LiteOn and Optiarc:

[B]Manufacturer  MedianError  Under 3%[/B]
Plextor          2.2 %        84 %
Panasonic        2.3 %        81 %
Pioneer          2.5 %        75 %
LiteOn           2.7 %        65 %
LG               3.2 %        45 %
Optiarc          4.4 %        19 %

I mostly sell LG drives. I think I'll switch to Lite-On from now on. Pioneer are a bit too expensive, let alone Plextor and I don't have access to Panasonic drives.

 

[time]

Ironically, Sony Optiarc is expensive in my part of the world.

When I tried to return one the other day (second failure for that PC), the supplier apologized and advised me I would have to deal with Sony direct.

I've had dealings with Sony before, so it's going in the bin.

Not that I'm prejudiced or anything ...

 

[Mercutio]

I typically buy Optiarc drives because they're quiet and don't do stupid things when you try to rip DVDs in the way that Sony and Toshiba branded drives do. I've had very few issues with Optiarc drives over time. Other than a couple people I know who steal movies (and kill drives) like fiends, I doubt I've seen five bad drives in five years.

 

[time]

I'm sure they're the quietest drives - that was one of the key reasons I've been using them. But I had noticed that they wouldn't read as wide a range of discs as say, LiteOn (which are traditionally quite noisy, BTW).

The extra fast eject action ran into trouble in this latest failure. It intermittently jams somehow but continues to try to eject. When I last listened to it, it sounded like it had ended up stripping the gears.

Still works much of the time, but it's now in limbo, i.e. workshop use only.

The other brand I've had some trouble with is LG, but that's not news. Looking at those stats, they make a huge number of different models, and some are really good. I'd rather not be part of their test program, though.