Best DVD-ROM or Burner to play back and duplicate old DVD-Rs

[navarros]

I have a collection of over 5,000 DVD-Rs. I recently found with horror that many of the recordings I made a couple of years ago (even others that are more recent) will not play any more. Sometimes I can fix this by making a fresh new duplicate, but in most cases all of my 5 DVD-ROMS/Burners will give me errors when trying to make a copy (they seem to be unable to read discs that may not be scratched but are one or two years old). I live in Miami, where humidity is a big problem, but I never thought the problem would turn out to be so widespread. By the way, these problems occur with all diferent kind of brands and media.

Does anybody know of a good DVD-ROM that can play more easily old recordings?

[budz]

What brands of dvdroms/dvd burners do you have? It would make it easier if you filled out your computer specs in your profile. What brands of dvd media are those 5000 DVD-R's? Usually using cheapo dvd media will be the reason why the discs are unreadable.

[navarros]

What brands of dvdroms/dvd burners do you have? It would make it easier if you filled out your computer specs in your profile. What brands of dvd media are those 5000 DVD-R's? Usually using cheapo dvd media will be the reason why the discs are unreadable.

My burners are:

IDE\CDROM_NEC_DVD+-RW_ND-3530A___________________104C
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-107D____________________________Rev. 1.15


My DVD-ROMs:

IDE\CDROMSONY_DVD-ROM_DDU1615____________________FDS2
AOPEN DVD-ROM_DVD1648

I can't list all the brands I have used (too many), but they include mostly branded names (Verbatim, TDK, Ritek, etc.). I have experienced problems with ALL of them.

I wonder if any of you can recommend reliable PLAYERS, BURNERS and BLANK MEDIA.

[budz]

Get a LITEON DVDROM or BENQ 1650/1655 lightscribe DVD burner. BENQ 1640 is still available at COMPUSA under the COMPUSA NORWOOD MICRO BRAND 16x DVDRW. The BENQ's are good readers but if you've used cheap dvd media getting a new dvdrom/dvdrw may not even help.

Brand names don't mean much, it's the MEDIA code that is important. I only use VERBATIM with MCC media codes, SONY (MADE IN JAPAN) +/- discs which are media code TY (TAIYO YUDEN), FUJI (MADE IN JAPAN) +/- media code is TY & MAXELL (MADE IN JAPAN) +/-. The VERBATIM's are MADE IN TAIWAN but there fine to use.

[navarros]

Get a LITEON DVDROM or BENQ 1650/1655 lightscribe DVD burner. BENQ 1640 is still available at COMPUSA under the COMPUSA NORWOOD MICRO BRAND 16x DVDRW. The BENQ's are good readers but if you've used cheap dvd media getting a new dvdrom/dvdrw may not even help.

Brand names don't mean much, it's the MEDIA code that is important. I only use VERBATIM with MCC media codes, SONY (MADE IN JAPAN) +/- discs which are media code TY (TAIYO YUDEN), FUJI (MADE IN JAPAN) +/- media code is TY & MAXELL (MADE IN JAPAN) +/-. The VERBATIM's are MADE IN TAIWAN but there fine to use.

Budz,

Thanks a lot for the advice!

Santiago

[smitbret]

I have 4 drives that I currently use, Lite-On DVD-ROM (???? model, it was the one that everyone was raving about as the best ripper ever 6 months ago), Plextor 740A, Pioneer DVR109 & Pioneer DVR110D. Of the four, the Pioneer DVR109 will rip DVDs that the other three won't even touch. If that fails, I toss the disc and I toss them rarely. Conversely, the DVR109 is the least reliable burner of the bunch.
-Brett

[Colindale]

I have a collection of over 5,000 DVD-Rs. I recently found with horror that many of the recordings I made a couple of years ago (even others that are more recent) will not play any more. Sometimes I can fix this by making a fresh new duplicate, but in most cases all of my 5 DVD-ROMS/Burners will give me errors when trying to make a copy (they seem to be unable to read discs that may not be scratched but are one or two years old). I live in Miami, where humidity is a big problem, but I never thought the problem would turn out to be so widespread. By the way, these problems occur with all diferent kind of brands and media.

Does anybody know of a good DVD-ROM that can play more easily old recordings?

I had the same problem with backed up movies, unable to read them with either a LiteOn DVD
player reader cd-rom burner or an LG 4120 DVD burner.

Solved the problem with the new LG H10A Multi burner, now reads all the DVD's the others will not touch.

But has the lasers on those drives started to die?, good question.??????.