Verbatim Cd-R's are junk!!

[Neil]

Hello

For anyone who has burned CD's for Music, or Data, I've found VERBATIM
CD'S are the worst. The average seek time is > 7 seconds for newly
burned discs. I thought I had a problem with my CD-RW Drive, so I
cleaned the optical laser with a cleaning CD, then lightly cleaned it
out with compressed air. I tried other brands from TDK, Maxell,
Imation, CD-R's and they all work fine.

I also looked at the model of my player to make it was MULTI-READ
COMPLIANT, and it is. It appears that the stamped out( bright silver
surface type) CD's from the Software Companies work the best. The
average seek time is less then a couple seconds. These VERBATIM CD-R's,
the surface refectivity is very low, so the laser takes longer for it
to read the CD. If there was a mechanical problem with my drive, it
would of showed up on ALL the discs, not just Verbatim
CD-R's but it doesn't. My friend had the same problem with a burned
CD I gave him from the stack, and he has a Brand new SONY CD_RW/DVD
Writer Drive on his system.

Avoid them like the plague! I'm thinking of dumping these CD-R's and
buying some others to replace them. You might have better luck with
your machine,model,make etc, but I will never buy these again!!

For those who are wondering which ones I'm refering to, on the side of
the blue and white packaging, there is a reorder number# 95028

I wrote Verbatim a Email,I notified them that there could be
manufacturing flaw with the CD-R's I got at christmas.

No Reply!!

-Neil

 

[Jim Thompson]

Hello

For anyone who has burned CD's for Music, or Data, I've found VERBATIM
CD'S are the worst. The average seek time is > 7 seconds for newly
burned discs. I thought I had a problem with my CD-RW Drive, so I
cleaned the optical laser with a cleaning CD, then lightly cleaned it
out with compressed air. I tried other brands from TDK, Maxell,
Imation, CD-R's and they all work fine.

I also looked at the model of my player to make it was MULTI-READ
COMPLIANT, and it is. It appears that the stamped out( bright silver
surface type) CD's from the Software Companies work the best. The
average seek time is less then a couple seconds. These VERBATIM CD-R's,
the surface refectivity is very low, so the laser takes longer for it
to read the CD. If there was a mechanical problem with my drive, it
would of showed up on ALL the discs, not just Verbatim
CD-R's but it doesn't. My friend had the same problem with a burned
CD I gave him from the stack, and he has a Brand new SONY CD_RW/DVD
Writer Drive on his system.

Avoid them like the plague! I'm thinking of dumping these CD-R's and
buying some others to replace them. You might have better luck with
your machine,model,make etc, but I will never buy these again!!

For those who are wondering which ones I'm refering to, on the side of
the blue and white packaging, there is a reorder number# 95028

I wrote Verbatim a Email,I notified them that there could be
manufacturing flaw with the CD-R's I got at christmas.

No Reply!!

-Neil

Taiyo Yuden are the best, bar none. Costs slightly more than the
junk, but worth it. I buy them a 100-pack at a time.

...Jim Thompson

 

[martin griffith]

snip
Taiyo Yuden are the best, bar none. Costs slightly more than the
junk, but worth it. I buy them a 100-pack at a time.

...Jim Thompson

Jeez, how much data do you have Jim?

martin

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
Gandhi

 

[Jim Thompson]

Jeez, how much data do you have Jim?

martin

Well, it's real easy to go through CDs. Finish a project, make a copy
of all files for the customer, and a copy for my archives. A big
project might run 5 CDs _per_copy_. You can go through a 100 CDs
pretty fast.

(I have "Mark/qrk's" project on two CDs, and that project was not at a
high enough frequency (~1MHz) to make large dat files. I have some
projects where the signal frequency is 8GHz.)

...Jim Thompson

 

[John Larkin]

Taiyo Yuden are the best, bar none. Costs slightly more than the
junk, but worth it. I buy them a 100-pack at a time.

...Jim Thompson

We back up everything (entire company library) weekly onto a few
Office Depot DVDs, and they seem fine. The Brat discovered a cave
under our garage at home, so we take each week's backups and original
release media (floppies or CDs), pop into a ziploc, and throw into
that into a big cardboard box, one for each year. I figure that if we
have a server disaster, we'll figure out the mess then.

John

 

[Luhan Monat]

Hello

For anyone who has burned CD's for Music, or Data, I've found VERBATIM
CD'S are the worst. The average seek time is > 7 seconds for newly
burned discs. I thought I had a problem with my CD-RW Drive, so I
cleaned the optical laser with a cleaning CD, then lightly cleaned it
out with compressed air. I tried other brands from TDK, Maxell,
Imation, CD-R's and they all work fine.

I also looked at the model of my player to make it was MULTI-READ
COMPLIANT, and it is. It appears that the stamped out( bright silver
surface type) CD's from the Software Companies work the best. The
average seek time is less then a couple seconds. These VERBATIM CD-R's,
the surface refectivity is very low, so the laser takes longer for it
to read the CD. If there was a mechanical problem with my drive, it
would of showed up on ALL the discs, not just Verbatim
CD-R's but it doesn't. My friend had the same problem with a burned
CD I gave him from the stack, and he has a Brand new SONY CD_RW/DVD
Writer Drive on his system.

Avoid them like the plague! I'm thinking of dumping these CD-R's and
buying some others to replace them. You might have better luck with
your machine,model,make etc, but I will never buy these again!!

For those who are wondering which ones I'm refering to, on the side of
the blue and white packaging, there is a reorder number# 95028

I wrote Verbatim a Email,I notified them that there could be
manufacturing flaw with the CD-R's I got at christmas.

No Reply!!

-Neil

Yo,

I remember the good old days when Verbatim was known for making
defective floppy disks.

 

[Chris Carlen]

We back up everything (entire company library) weekly onto a few
Office Depot DVDs, and they seem fine. The Brat discovered a cave
under our garage at home, so we take each week's backups and original
release media (floppies or CDs), pop into a ziploc, and throw into
that into a big cardboard box, one for each year. I figure that if we
have a server disaster, we'll figure out the mess then.

John

I don't think it's wise to use no-name media, CD or DVD, for data archival.

I have had quite an obsession with this subject for the past few years
and have done mass amounts of research. About CD-Rs I can confirm Jim
Thompson's assertion that Taiyo Yuden are the best. He must have done
his homework.

I hesitated to use writable DVD media until just recently after backups
to CD-R(W)s became cumbersome due to needing too many disks.

I settled on the use of cartridge DVD-RAM for daily backups. It's neat
because I can use one cartridge to implement my two-disk scheme for
dailys. I alternate between two re-writable disks each day, so there's
always a record of the past two days. DVD-RAM is really cool. And
having a DVD-RAM compatible drive means I can stick my DVD-RAM video
recorder disks in my PC and play the files.

Then at the end of the week I burn a recordable, DVD+R in the new scheme.

Jim, you might want to process this unsettling tidbit: Taiyo Yuden
DVD+R media hasn't been so perfectly reputable. If you ever move to
DVDs, you'll have to do your homework all over again. I have a stack of
TY 8x DVD+R lot TG001133 that have a problem with tiny specks toward the
outer rim. This causes some folks to be unable to use them past 2GB.

For CD-Rs it works like this:

There are good, medium-good, and el-cheapo factories. There are only a
few factories. Brands like Sony, Verbatim, etc. buy from any of the
factories, and put them in the same branded boxes. So you don't know by
buying Sony that you are getting the good stuff. One box of Sony may be
crap factory, and the next might be the best.

It's even more bizarre with a manufacturer like TDK that makes their
own, generally considered in the good category, but also brands other
factories' CD-Rs into the same packages, depending on the phase of the moon.

So the only way to know if the stuff is good is to look at the
manufacturer data on the disk. The brand tells you little.

So buy TY, which aren't branded but are the best.

For CD-RW, I found Yamaha 24x to be very good, but expensive.

For DVD+-R(W) things are rather new to me. I have bought a bunch of
Verbatim, since I heard it was TY anyway. Unfortunately, my Linux
software that tells me an abundance of technical info about CD-Rs works
differently with DVD media, so I am not sure who really made these
DVD+RW and DVD+R disks. (See an example below, I just get a code, no
readable Manufacturer.)


crcarle@mango2:~> dvd+rw-mediainfo /dev/dvdrw
INQUIRY: [MATSHITA][DVD-RAM SW-9573S][AZH3]
GET [CURRENT] CONFIGURATION:
Mounted Media: 1Bh, DVD+R
Media ID: MCC/003
Current Write Speed: 4.0x1385=5540KB/s
Write Speed #0: 4.0x1385=5540KB/s
Write Speed #1: 2.4x1385=3324KB/s
Speed Descriptor#0: 01/2295103 [email protected]=5540KB/s [email protected]=5540KB/s
Speed Descriptor#1: 01/2295103 [email protected]=3324KB/s [email protected]=3324KB/s
READ DVD STRUCTURE[#0h]:
Media Book Type: A1h, DVD+R book [revision 1]
Legacy lead-out at: 2295104*2KB=4700372992
READ DISC INFORMATION:
Disc status: blank
Number of Sessions: 1
State of Last Session: empty
Number of Tracks: 1
READ TRACK INFORMATION[#1]:
Track State: blank
Track Start Address: 0*2KB
Next Writable Address: 0*2KB
Free Blocks: 2295104*2KB
Track Size: 2295104*2KB


Oh but a Google on the media code reveals it's Mitsubishi.


Good day!






--
_______________________________________________________________________
Christopher R. Carlen
Principal Laser/Optical Technologist
Sandia National Laboratories CA USA
[email protected]
NOTE, delete texts: "RemoveThis" and "BOGUS" from email address to reply.

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 18:06:13 -0800, Chris Carlen

[snip]

I don't think it's wise to use no-name media, CD or DVD, for data archival.

I have had quite an obsession with this subject for the past few years
and have done mass amounts of research. About CD-Rs I can confirm Jim
Thompson's assertion that Taiyo Yuden are the best. He must have done
his homework.
[snip]


Good day!

Only after being "burned" ;-) then Mark/qrk put me straight.

Somewhere around here I have an identifier exe that he provided. I'll
post it as soon as I remember where I stashed it.

...Jim Thompson

 

[Terry Given]

Taiyo Yuden are the best, bar none. Costs slightly more than the
junk, but worth it. I buy them a 100-pack at a time.

...Jim Thompson

Thanks for the tip. A couple of years ago a buddy of mine in MA emailed
me, saying what a great deal on CD-Rs he got at staples - $0.27ea. A
week later another email arrived, stating that 2 had already become
unreadable. oops.

Cheers
Terry

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

Thanks for the tip. A couple of years ago a buddy of mine in MA emailed
me, saying what a great deal on CD-Rs he got at staples - $0.27ea. A
week later another email arrived, stating that 2 had already become
unreadable. oops.

Cheers
Terry

I think Taiyo Yuden make a lot of electronic components.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[martin griffith]

Well, it's real easy to go through CDs. Finish a project, make a copy
of all files for the customer, and a copy for my archives. A big
project might run 5 CDs _per_copy_. You can go through a 100 CDs
pretty fast.

(I have "Mark/qrk's" project on two CDs, and that project was not at a
high enough frequency (~1MHz) to make large dat files. I have some
projects where the signal frequency is 8GHz.)

...Jim Thompson

I just realised, as soon as I hit the send key, that I have over
1200Gbytes of video on HDD's. and about another 20 hours waiting to be
put on my HDD's at 13.5G/hour.

Now thats a backup problem. whatever happened to Electron Beam
Recording?


martin

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
Gandhi

 

[Michael]

I remember the good old days when Verbatim was known for making
defective floppy disks.

My experience is the opposite. I still use several boxes of Verbatim 1.44MB
disks that I bought about 14 years ago.

Now, IBM 3.5" 1,44MB disks ..... that another kettle o' fish altogether! Where
I worked they were infamous for frequent failure ("sector not found"),
especially when mucho time had elapsed between writing and the next attempt to
read. I experienced this myself MANY times, on a variety of PCs and diskette
drives. One colleague took to removing the medium (tossing the plastic shell)
from each offending diskette and sticking the aforementioned "floppy" to his
office door with a little magnet. When he left the company in 1992 that door
was pretty much covered, a testament to crap diskettes. We all scratched our
heads about why our company would continue to supply us with awful diskettes
when their high failure rate was common knowledge. I think the reason was right
under our noses: our company was IBM; it bought from itself.

 

[Steve Sousa]

My experience is the opposite. I still use several boxes of Verbatim
1.44MB
disks that I bought about 14 years ago.

That's what i thought when i bought about 4 boxes a year ago.
They were total crap, some gave errors on the same day i used them, i
thought i had a bad drive, until i tried it on an old box with vgacopy, most
of the surface gives weak signal, even if the disk is not giving you errors
(yet). Stay away from them.
I used to love the blue cd-r, still have some, about 10 years old, working
fine.

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 18:06:13 -0800, Chris Carlen

[snip]

I don't think it's wise to use no-name media, CD or DVD, for data archival.

I have had quite an obsession with this subject for the past few years
and have done mass amounts of research. About CD-Rs I can confirm Jim
Thompson's assertion that Taiyo Yuden are the best. He must have done
his homework.
[snip]


Good day!

Only after being "burned" ;-) then Mark/qrk put me straight.

Somewhere around here I have an identifier exe that he provided. I'll
post it as soon as I remember where I stashed it.

...Jim Thompson

CDR media identifier posted at...

http://www.analog-innovations.com/SED/cdrid163.zip

...Jim Thompson

 

[Mike Engelhardt]

Jim,

CDR media identifier posted at...

http://www.analog-innovations.com/SED/cdrid163.zip

Cool!

--Mike

 

[Jim Thompson]

Jim,


Cool!

--Mike

Thank Mark/qrk for that pointer. He told me about it quite a few
years ago.

...Jim Thompson

 

[John Larkin]

I don't think it's wise to use no-name media, CD or DVD, for data archival.

Our philosophy is massive overkill onto write-once media. Everything
official is released on floppy or CD. The company librarian copies
that to a server drive (proving the media is ok at that instant) and I
take the originals home and put them in The Cave. Every week we burn
an archive of all the server files and put them in the cave, too. Once
in a while somebody else takes a set home, just for luck. Every file
is copied so many times that the media could be 99% unreliable and
we'd still be OK. This scheme allows for server files to be corrupted
too, unlike rotating backups.

A few years ago we copied all our tape backups to CD as the drives
became obsolete. Like they say, only the paranoid survive.

John

 

[Jim Thompson]

Our philosophy is massive overkill onto write-once media. Everything
official is released on floppy or CD. The company librarian copies
that to a server drive (proving the media is ok at that instant) and I
take the originals home and put them in The Cave. Every week we burn
an archive of all the server files and put them in the cave, too. Once
in a while somebody else takes a set home, just for luck. Every file
is copied so many times that the media could be 99% unreliable and
we'd still be OK. This scheme allows for server files to be corrupted
too, unlike rotating backups.

A few years ago we copied all our tape backups to CD as the drives
became obsolete. Like they say, only the paranoid survive.

John

Absolutely! I learned the hard way that tape backups aren't worth the
powder to blow 'em to hell... sitting for several years the tape
sticks to itself :-(

...Jim Thompson

 

[John Larkin]

Absolutely! I learned the hard way that tape backups aren't worth the
powder to blow 'em to hell... sitting for several years the tape
sticks to itself :-(

...Jim Thompson

So far, all the CDs that we've pulled out of the cave have been fine,
going back 4 years at least. We switched to DVDs about 9 months ago,
and I hope they're as good. The Cave is fairly dry, and we keep them
in ziploc bags; I think moisture can get to some burnable CDs and
DVDs.

Tapes always were flakey. Except for paper tape, of course.

John

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

I have had quite an obsession with this subject for the past few years
and have done mass amounts of research. About CD-Rs I can confirm Jim
Thompson's assertion that Taiyo Yuden are the best. He must have done
his homework.

But how do you identify them before you buy them?

I settled on the use of cartridge DVD-RAM for daily backups.

In they say that magneto-optical is
better for long life, 50-100 years estimated.