Taiyo Yuden, A Bad Batch?

[Tom Saurus]

I use Tayo Yuden 8x DVD+R's for burning data or movies to. I use ImagBurn 2.1.0.0. to build ISO files and then to write them. I have Burn Proof and Verify turned on. Lately I am getting a fair number of discs that are not verifying. I usually see a band around the underside of the disc that stands out from the rest of the surface and I assume that is where the flaw is. When a disc doesn't veryify after it has burned I throw it out.

In the past my Taiyo Yuden usually had a success rate of 97 out of a 100. I have also been burning some Maxell 8x DVD-R's and so far every one out of the cakebox of 50 has been burning and verifying. I have only about 12 left, and I use them to put stuff on for a friend.

I am wondering can sometimes Tayo Yuden end up with a bad batch of discs going out from the factory? I know it is possible that my DVD burner or computer could be at fault.

I have a Nec DVD RW ND-3500 AG 2.16. The Firmware Version is 2.16; it was recommended to me to upgrade the firmware. I bought 200 hundred discs in my last order, at the rate things are going I am going to be fortunate is 80 out of a 100 turn out.

So is it a basic fact that Taiyo Yuden is of such high quality that if they fail it usually a problem with the hardware or software on one's computer? Thanks in advance for any information you can give me on this topic.

[SLK001]

How about a batch of pirate T-Y disks? They exist and even reputable dealers have unwittingly (?) sold them.

At your failure rates, if it isn't your equipment, I would suspect a pirated batch. What is the MFG ID off the disk?

[Tom Saurus]

SLK001: Thank you for your input. The Media Code according to ImagBurn 2.1.0.0 is:
Disc ID: YUDEN000-T02-00
Book Type: DVD+R

I did buy them from a reputable place and I don't think they would intentionaly sell me an inferior product. I think they should be as open to the possibility that a bad batch comes through every once in awhile. Though with my computer problems lately anything is possible.

I have became so spoiled, because I am used to the Tayo Yuden DVD+R, almost always having a successful burn and then the verify process turning out as well.

Thank you once again for the information you have provided. It was kind of you to take the time to respond to my questions.

[SLK001]

Look at the hub of your disks. A real T-Y disk will have a unique number CLEARLY printed near the hole with two "G"s or "TG" included (ie, GG004421 or TG000347).

Also, there should be another unique number etched in the plastic near the hub (ie, XC421A08821GG).

Also, the package should have had "MADE IN JAPAN" printed on it.

The Media ID number can be easily faked.

A real T-Y disk will have the dye layer smooth and without color variations.

[OneSickPup]

@Tom Saurus

Here's a link to a lot of info on TY Media:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=178622

In simplest terms - TY DVD discs have three codes, a four-digit number, a eight-character batch code (which are both located in the outer hub area) and another code in the transparent hub. Batch codes are a dead giveaway on pirated media. You should find a batch code on those similar to this - TGxxxxxx

[Tom Saurus]

SLK001: On the burn side of the discs there is beyond the hub a blue inner rim and there is a blue rim at the outer edge of the disc. I read the following within the hub: "TG00162" and on the other side of the hub was "1502". On the see-through-plastic part of the hub, I can see a code number consisting both of number and letters, but it very hard to read; it blends right in with the plastic. The burning surface of the disc has a purple tint to it. Thank you for the additional information.

[Tom Saurus]

onesickpup: Thank you for your imput on this topic. I will check out the link that you have provided. From what I gather, from examing the discs, they seem to be genuine.

[Tom Saurus]

I appologize to OneSickPup for not putting capital letters in the proper spot in your username when I typed it in, no offence intended.

I forgot to mention that the DVDs came in tape wrap. There was 100 DVDs in the package. I put them in some empty cake boxes I had.

[Tom Saurus]

Update: Kind of getting a little depressed about these discs. I burned three discs this morning; one burned sucessfully and verified and two burned successfully but would verify. Hopefully my other batch of 100 will work out better than this batch. Thanks for all the information that I have received on this topic.

[NiteLite]

When a disc doesn't veryify after it has burned I throw it out.

Please dont take this the wrong way but I would not let a piece of software decide whether to keep or throw away a burned disc. The software could be in error. It does happen.

Do the ones that you find not verifying play in your standalone players? Or even on your computer?
If something does not verify I would at least check it on a DVD player and not depend solely on a piece of software telling me something that may or may not be true.

I am suprised as you if indeed these are real TY which they seem to be. But I still say to try them before tossing them. Maybe an error code will appear that will help find the solution.
Regards,
NL

[mike1061]

Two things.
1. I don't think real TY's come "the DVDs came in tape wrap"
I get them already on a stick.
2. The disk verifying it self is a good test. Where it is true that programs, and burners can have problems can have errors durnig the verifying process, you are doing just about the best test you can do. Generaly speaking the burner that burned the disk in the first place has the best chance of reading the disk. DVD's, in data or video, structure have built in error checking/correction abilities, and if the burner that burned the disk can't read it, that lessin's the probability of other's ability to read it. A better test is MD5's. If they match all the data was read correctly. A standalone playing the disk is not a very complete chack at all, because it will skip sectors it can't read. You may or may not notice the difference while you watch it. The point of burning to disk is to be able to access the data at a later time, and the best quality burn is the best chance of this happening.
Thanks Mike

[Tom Saurus]

NightLite: Thank you for input. The number of failures on the Geniune Tayo Yuden have increased. I put in what I am sure is a fake Tayo Yuden, and it burned and verified successfully. I updated the firmware, due to some advice I received over at the ImgBurn Forum. I had one success this morning, and I stopped running other programs at the same time, to see if that would help. The second DVD I burned this morning burned successfully, but would not verify. It was nearly done verifying when it indicated there was a problem. I looked at the burn side of the disc and there was a distinct blue circle that stood out as different then the rest of the burn surface.

This is a really perplexing situation. A man at the place I bought the DVD+Rs from wrote the following in an email:

If you try other high quality disks and get errors, it is for sure software/hardware.
If you don't have errors .. it might be the media with that burner.


So far the Maxell Plus Brand that I bought from his company has turned out very well. Not one fail in the bunch. Though I haven't tried it for two days now. They I are discs that my friend bought for me to put stuff on for him, so I can't just use them willy nilly.

For the part where he wrote "If you don't have errors... it might be the media with that burner". I don't really understand that because the odd one is still turning out, and the last batch that I just used turned out.

I don't think they are going to entertain the possibility that I could of somehow got stuck with a two hundred discs with a good portion of them having flaws. I really don't mind taking the blame, if it is my burner or software. But I am not going to order exclusively Tayo Yudens any more. I will try Verbatims for awhile and see what happens. As someone wrote on this forum or the one at ImgBurn, Tayo Yudens are the Cadillac of DVD Media. It is very unlikely this is the fault of the Tayo Yuden Media. I hope this isn't connected to my computer "underclocking".

There were some discs last night that didn't seem to have flaws from what I could tell by looking at there surface though there did seem the slightest sliver of a groove that stood out. I am willing to bet those ones would of played. The only thing about being able to play, and not verifying, one might want to extract files off that someday to transfer to a newer, advanced type of media and not be able to get all the data one wants.

[non-linear]

Two things.
1. I don't think real TY's come "the DVDs came in tape wrap"

Actually, real TY discs are tape wrapped (I think only in batches of 100); your provider is probably either repacking them or the ones you're getting aren't real TY.

I have burned over 500 TY discs and have had 0 bad discs. That's not to say that it's impossible to get a bad batch, but I have yet to have any problems with TY discs.

[dafoe]

I didn't read every post. So I apologize if somebody already covered this. But Grade A TYs don't come in packs of 100. The only Tys that do are the "Value Line"

Many people swear they are as good as Grade A TYs. I disagree and stopped buying them when I got a bad batch a long time ago. If you do a search for value TY you will probably find several threads discussing this issue.

[strongbad]

Two things.
1. I don't think real TY's come "the DVDs came in tape wrap"

Actually, real TY discs are tape wrapped (I think only in batches of 100); your provider is probably either repacking them or the ones you're getting aren't real TY.

Not true. They come in spindles as well, atleast for the 50pks.

[cyflyer]

Tom Saurus, I have to second the thought by previous posters and ask, are the TY's you bought actually the 'value line' jobs ? They did come in the 100 tape wrap didn't they ? This may be the source of your problems. I also found a small number of dodgy discs in the 100 value line pack in the past. After all, they are VALUE LINE, and WHY are they VALUE LINE ????
Inferior in some way to the normal/premium line. I think its common sense.

I found a source that sells the plain TY's and also the TY's under the brand name of 'Thats' which is what they sell them under in Japan itself apparently. For peace of mind I pay a little extra and gets the 'Thats' branded versions and there is no finer disc for me. I can't understand why they don't sell them in the states though, which is unfortunate.

The moral is, get the slightly more expensive TY's from a reputable seller and see how it goes.

[Tom Saurus]

cyflyer: I bought the premium Tayo Yudens. Here is the exact discs that I bought from blankmedia.ca:
http://blankmedia.ca/proddetail3.asp?id=362

Perhaps it is my DVD Burner, I don't know what the cause is.

[TooLFooL]

my 2 cents:
in a year ive used about 800 TY 8x dvd-r's and had Hmmm..... maybe 6 coasters. about 4 of em were in the very hottest days of the summer.....

[VegasBud]

Tom Saurus,

Are the TY disks that normally work well for you the YUDEN000-T02-00? The Taiyo Yuden disks I get have the TYG02 media code, and I've never had a problem with those. It seems a shame to give up on TY entirely, but the first rule of burning is to use what works, don't buy what doesn't work.

To clear up a few misperceptions:

You should always use Verify after a burn. It's the only way to be certain that every bit of every byte on the burned disk is identical to the source. ImgBurn's Verify can be trusted implicitly. If it says the burn had a problem...it did. If you really want to make sure, there are directory/file compare programs you can use to verify the Verify, but you're wasting your time if you're using ImgBurn.

Premium TY disks come in both tape wrap or spindles. I've only used the tape wrap for years. The most recent ones I got were these.

[samijubal]

When was the last time you defraged the HD? I've burned hundreds of the value TYs in the same burner without having any problems except for about 4 discs which were clearly defective. I don't use + discs though, they were all DVD-R.

[lordsmurf]

You should always use Verify after a burn. It's the only way to be certain that every bit of every byte on the burned disk is identical to the source.

Wrong.

In theory, yes, that is correct. In practice, results are unreliable. Most "verify" options in software like Nero and ImgBurn are known to give false readings on verifications. Those tests are not accurate. For accurate tests, you'd need to do file comparisons in third-party comparison software, or using OS utilities (such as DOS command in a batch).

For disc quality, excluding data comparisons, there are many other methods to compare. See www.nomorecoasters.com for some info on these other methods.

Perhaps it is my DVD Burner, I don't know what the cause is.

This is a reasonable assessment. It happens. Taiyo Yuden is not "the best" media when it comes to devices that can write or read the discs. Very good, yes, without a doubt. But Mitsubishi discs are arguably better for the reasons just described.

Many people swear they are as good as Grade A TYs. I disagree and stopped buying them .

There is no such thing as "Grade A" or "Grade B" media from Taiyo Yuden. What you do have, however, are different branded lines. Professional, Premium, and Value. To say one is better than the other is assumption more than anything else. There is not necessarily anything "wrong" with lower graded media (at least not from this manufacturer), but rather "something" caused the lower grade.

.
.
.

Let's try to avoid speculation, rumor and misinformation here. If for no other reason than it really does not address the problem Tom Saurus is having.

[mike1061]

This is the kind I use http://blankmedia.ca/proddetail3.asp?id=303 They come on a spindle. It is intresting to me that there are any that tape are rapped at all, but there are several that are packed that way. I just learned something. http://blankmedia.ca/prodsubcats.asp?id=62
That said, it looks like the kind you have are TY.

The problem could be anything. You have to try to figure it out, by changing something. The eaisest thing to change is the disks. If others burn well, right them off as a bad batch. If the same disks burn on a different burner, then change the burner.
As a general rule you should not run any other programs when burning. If you have a very good computer you may be able to get away with it. If you are having problems or are trying to figure out something, them do not run anything else. That eliminates that from the problem.
Thanks Mike

[punisher]

I can remember last year I bought 2 cakeboxes of Fuji branded TY 8x (from Bestbuy) and none were good for more than a ~4 gig burn. They had visible dye defects and bubbles on the outer 1/4" around the circumference.


No problems before or since with TY media.

[VegasBud]

lordsmurf,

We certainly agree about Nero sometimes giving inaccurate verification reports (in my experience about 1% error rate), but I have never seen a single verification report from ImgBurn/DvdDecrypter that was in error. Every cd or dvd I have ever burned (with critical data) was verified not only by the burning software, but also by file compare programs. Any discrepancy was manually checked using a hex editor on the burned and source versions of the file(s) in question, to determine which program made the error.

[lordsmurf]

I've seen them from DVD Decrypter. I've not seen one from ImgBurn yet, but I've not had time or need to use ImgBurn all that much. If LUK! coded it the same, I doubt it'll be much different.

[lgh529]

I had a bad batch as well. I discussed it in this topic. What I found was that the first half of the spindle had about 40% failure, but the rest burned 100% with no more costers.\

Weird.

[NiteLite]

NightLite: Thank you for input. The number of failures on the Geniune Tayo Yuden have increased. I put in what I am sure is a fake Tayo Yuden, and it burned and verified successfully. I updated the firmware, due to some advice I received over at the ImgBurn Forum. I had one success this morning, and I stopped running other programs at the same time, to see if that would help. The second DVD I burned this morning burned successfully, but would not verify. It was nearly done verifying when it indicated there was a problem. I looked at the burn side of the disc and there was a distinct blue circle that stood out as different then the rest of the burn surface.

I don't think they are going to entertain the possibility that I could of somehow got stuck with a two hundred discs with a good portion of them having flaws. I really don't mind taking the blame, if it is my burner or software. But I am not going to order exclusively Tayo Yudens any more. I will try Verbatims for awhile and see what happens. As someone wrote on this forum or the one at ImgBurn, Tayo Yudens are the Cadillac of DVD Media. It is very unlikely this is the fault of the Tayo Yuden Media. I hope this isn't connected to my computer "underclocking".

There were some discs last night that didn't seem to have flaws from what I could tell by looking at there surface though there did seem the slightest sliver of a groove that stood out. I am willing to bet those ones would of played. The only thing about being able to play, and not verifying, one might want to extract files off that someday to transfer to a newer, advanced type of media and not be able to get all the data one wants.

Sorry to hear that things have not improved, Tom.
I was not all to familiar with Imgburn but now that I have read up on it and know the author I would trust it. In fact I am going to download it and check it out for .iso burns.
I can see both Vegasbud and lordsmurf's points of views on the use of the verifying process with the program. Seeing both points as valid is due to my lack of knowledge and having to trust those here with the expertise levels I have not reached.
To be clear I have found that "White Printables" - Premium line - do come in shrink-wrap and the Shinny Silvers come in cake boxes of 50 and the shinny silver tops in cake-wrap are the "value" line which simple means they did not live up to TY's demands to qualify as Premium for what ever reason.
Some have had problems with the value line others have not.
A bad batch of premium TY's is rare. You could maybe send them back but shipping costs may not make it worth it. The way you describe the write side does sound like a bad disc.
I have written a few hundred TYG01's and G02's without error so it's really sad to hear of your experience.
You have some good suggestions to try from this thread such as trying your batch in another writer, trying other brands or batch of TY's in your writer, etc.
With the process of elimination I feel sure you can find the cause.
Vegasbud has in the past given me excellent help and information so trust his help.
Everyone else posting probably know their stuff also.
If I had known more about Imgburn I would have maybe repharsed my 1st post somewhat.
Anyway, hopefully the batch will clear up after a few discs so you can get some excellent burns that TY should give you.
Best of luck.
Regards,
NL

[Tom Saurus]

Update: I had more success yesterday with the Tayo Yudens. I also burned a verified a HP CD-R. I don't know if the new firmware finally kicked in, I ran on to some disc in the pack that were not flawed. It also could of been God answering the prayer, I prayed about this. Though I am ashamed to have asked Him for help on something that is so small and insignificant in the big scheme of things. I am hoping I am going to have some more success with the Tayo Yudens today.

I still have DVD Decrypter on my system and decided to burn a disc through it. It burned and verified. Then it I went back and tried ImgBurn, and seem to work better for me after that. As if it was a tad jealous, I cheated on it and used DVD Decrypter. This last paragraph doesn't make much sense, but one is entitled too a little flight of fancy if that is the term to describe enbuing software with a mentality and emotions of its own. Thank you to everyone for the great advice. I really do wonder if I did get a bad batch. I don't know if I will ever know for sure.

[NiteLite]

Hey Tom,
Thanks for the update. Since I use Taiyo Yudens exclusively your post kept my interest.
Maybe your writer and new firmware finally found the best write strategy for your media.
Many of us TY users would be concerned if bad batches of TY start showing up.
So thanks again for the update post and continued good luck.
Hey prayer never hurts.
Regards,
NL

[Tom Saurus]

Update: I know this is going to sound strange. I have still been having some problems burning the geniune Taiyo Yudens that I bought. Well lately I have had alot of successful burns by restarting my computer and then using ImagBurn2 to burn the ISO file I built using ImagBurn. So far nearly every DVD that I burn after restarting the computer has turned out, it even verifys. I don't understand it, and I wonder what restarting the computer and then getting a successful burn indicates.