Read error on "good" DVD discs?

jerrylynnb · Member Joined: 27 Oct 2008 Location: United States

I have hundreds of mpeg movies on DVD discs over the years - each one was recorded by a LITEON recorder and tested immediately (by reading it from my DVD reader onto the PC harddrive) successfully.

I have started finally watching these videos and about half of them have read errors, and I am very disappointed and lost as to how this happened and what to do about it. I kept them in plastic sleeves at room temperature, and cleaned them before trying to play them now.

I wonder just how reliable recordings on DVD discs are over the years.

I wonder if there is some application for windows that will go ahead and read the disc and just skip over the parts that are bad and try to make a playable mpeg with what can be read. Right now, windows hangs and I have to reboot to get past the I/O errors, which sometimes occur early in the movie and sometimes near the end. I have 5 different DVD readers and they all fail at the same spot on discs with I/O errors.

About half of my discs read just fine, but, I wonder if they will start failing in time. What could cause a DVD disc to go bad after creating it and testing it right away to make sure it can be read back into the PC's harddrive? Is there any workaround? Are half of my recordings beyond recovery? Are the still good ones likely to go bad in the future? I had thought that this media would be good for decades, at least.

Befuddled.

guns1inger · Member Joined: 01 Apr 2004 Location: Miskatonic U

Discs are not perfect. Not all readers read all discs well.

You don't say what brand of disc you have used, or if you have changed readers over the period in question.
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redwudz · Mod Neophyte Joined: 07 Sep 2002 Location: AZ, USA

What brand DVD discs did you use? I used Prodisc before I learned better and quite a few of my old discs are unreadable.

If the discs are damaged, not a lot you can do. You can try to read them with a program that ignores errors. DVD Decrypter is one. But if they are damaged, the damaged parts are usually permanently lost.

I would try Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden for your salvaged discs. They seem to last a bit longer.

And welcome to our forums.

fritzi93 · Member Joined: 01 Nov 2003 Location: U.S.

DvdDecrypter. Tools -> Settings -> I/O -> Software Read Error Retries: 7. Also tick the checkbox "Ignore Read Errors".

In my experience, 7 retries will get about all that can be recovered (and not take forever to plow through the disc). Then the read error will be ignored and reading will continue. That's about the best you can do. Silly question, but do any of these DVDs have stick-on labels?
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jerrylynnb · Member Joined: 27 Oct 2008 Location: United States

I used a variety of discs, including verbatim. I usually chose ones that were mid-priced, not the most expensive ones. I usually bought a 20 or a 50 pack, and, on a few occasions I got a bad batch but they failed right away so i just would throw the whole batch out and switch to ones that would allow me to read back the recorded data. That is what confuses me most - I read each and every disc I recorded back into my PC right after recording it, and, if it got a read error, I threw it away and did the recording on a new disc. That way, I thought I could be sure that every disc was readable (at least at the time they were written).

What I do not understand is how they could go bad after i proved that they could be read (when they were created)? That is what I just don't understand. I have 4 PC's (each with different brand DVD reader) and an external USB dvd reader, all of which read all discs that can be read by any of them.

In other words, I can't tell any difference between any of my DVD readers as to how well they read discs - any disc that can be read by any of my DVD readers can be read by all of them, and, any disc that fails on any of my DVD readers, fails on all of them (at the same spot). I still have the liteon dvd reader/writer that I orignially recorded with back when i started about 5 years ago, and, it works just fine like the newer ones.

What happens to DVD discs over the years that make them cause read errors? No moving parts, no magentism, I just can't figure it.

Anyways, I downloaded dvdcrypter and I'll try to salvage as much of these mpeg's as I can. Thanks for the link.

But I am no longer to assume that recording important data on DVD discs is reliable for the long term - I may have to start recording important data on 2 or 3 seperate discs to avoid losing it due to read errors that develope mysteriously.

SCDVD · Member Joined: 05 Oct 2004 Location: United States

Stability of the dye layer is a very important factor with media longevity. I have quite a large number of DVDs recorded on Taiyo Yuden media many of which are several years old that still play with no problems. Other brands that I used before I knew better are a different story. Many of them will no longer play without serious problems. Among the "nasties" are Ritek, Prodisc and Princo.

Stick with Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim media and use a good burner such as Pioneer and your results will be much different.

guns1inger · Member Joined: 01 Apr 2004 Location: Miskatonic U

How do you store the discs ? Are they kept in the dark, in a relatively temperature stable, dry environment ?
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jerrylynnb · Member Joined: 27 Oct 2008 Location: United States

Yes, I kept them covered (dark, in a box) wrapped in plastic sleeves, but, SCDVD probably hit it right on the head with his mention of the brand I was using. I don't remember all the brands I used, but verbatim is one, but, also, I remember using a lot of Ritek about 4 or 5 years ago. They recorded fine, and read back in fine, but, now they are failing. I learned my lesson, real good! I wish they would have had some kind of full-disclosure labeling as to what we needed to know about the longevity of the various brands back then - I just assumed that if I read them back successfully, then they were good and that was all I needed to worry about.

Well, I have learned now. I have never heard of Taiyo Yuden - where do you find this brand? I can usually get verbatim at walmart or sam's, but, I will also be looking for the taiyo brand now.

Live and learn.

budz · Posted: Oct 28, 2008 01:49

Get TAIYO YUDEN from www.rima.com end of story.

What are the brands/manufacturers of your 5 dvd readers? The brand/model & firmware of the drives would/could make a big difference.

AlanHK · Member Joined: 25 Apr 2006 Location: Hong Kong

IsoPuzzle will keep trying and retrying until it reads an entire disc, or you tell it to stop. It makes an ISO file with the sectors it can read which you can burn as-is, or extract files from using a variety of tools.

gll99 · Renegade Joined: 31 May 2002 Location: Canadian Tundra

hech54 · CONFUSED Joined: 26 Jul 2001 Location: Yank in Europe

All of my old Ritek 4x discs are still going strong.
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showtaper · Member Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Location: Chicago suburbs, IL

Before you declare any discs as unrecoverable, try a number of different drives. I've had some
older discs go "bad" only to find that they were readable on another drive. I'm fortunate as I have
multiple PC's at home and at work, so I have at least 10 different drives to work with.

I'm also a pack rat so I never throw away an old drive unless it has physically failed. I've had to
put one of these drives back into a computer to recover data from a disc it had written, but would
not read on anything else.

I'm no longer a fan of long term storage of important stuff on optical media. Too many discs perfectly
stored and rarely used have gone bad. I'm now storing video on discs as playable DVD's and also as
data to take advantage of better error correction. The same material is being stored on external HDs
also. If it's something really rare, I back it up to SVHS and DV. I've got 30+ year old videotapes that
are still playable. Not sure I'm going to be able to say the same for my DVDR collection........