WOW - reading discs with Pioneer vs. non-Pioneer

[wayne421]

In case this helps anyone....

I have had an interesting experience over the past weeks, one that at one point almost caused a nervous breakdown (well, not that bad, but it felt that way at the time).

I decided recently to begin transferring my old DVD-Rs onto Taiyo Yuden discs. Many of the them were 2+ years old, and as I didn't really know what I was doing back then, at least compared to now, I unfortunately used some 'questionable quality' media back **Princo cough cough**. The more recent discs were Ritek G04/G05 brands.

So I began putting those old discs into my trusty Lite-On 812S and guess what? There were massive errors on almost ALL OF THEM. I even tried reading them on my external Samsung DVD/CDRW, and both my laptop and my wife's laptop, but no go.

I was very upset, as these were discs of my wedding, personal projects I'd authored, and so forth, and many were irreplacable. After testing dozens of discs, with only 2 error-free, I sighed and chalked it up to my noob-level of experience at the time. 'Tis life.

Now, weeks later, totally by happenstance, I had one of those discs at my office. I was at the multimedia station doing something-or-other, and realized that there was an old Pioneer 106 installed in the machine. I figured it couldn't hurt, so I tossed the disc into it and tried to read it onto the harddrive.

It worked. Error free.

The read speed fluctuated wildly between 1x-6x, but it all came off.

I was stunned, but in a good way! I eagerly brought in more of them the next day to continue the experiment. I tried them on a Pioneer 108 we have here also, but again, some of the discs read with errors (but later read error-free on the 106). I found that the old Pioneer 106 could read just about ALL of them without ANY ERRORS.

SO, my conclusions are:

1) as obvious as this is, for heaven's sake, use good media (I now use solely TY discs)

2) it appears that Pioneer drives, with model 106 in particular, is more forgiving with media quality/condition (at least in this particular case)

I'm curious if anyone else has had experiences similar to this? Can we draw a general conclusion from this or am I experiencing dumb luck?

W

[RottenFoxBreath]

good media,all the time.
soon most people will realise this just like yourself,me included.

[lordsmurf]

Better lasers. BTC burners have one of the best laser readers around. Pioneer and LG are really good too (ROM, not burner).

And then burners are sometimes better on burned media, just depends on the media.

Buy better media in the future.

Cyanine variations (PRINCO) and certain organics (RITEK) are infamous for poor readback on some systems (often improperly called "disc rot" by the lesser informed).

Buy better media in the future.

[wayne421]

Thanks lordsmurf!

I wish I'd known that earlier, but at least now I can have either a Pioneer -RW or LG -ROM drive hanging around for reading those 'sketchy' discs!

W

[Hermit]

Wow this is quite something !!!!
Exactly same thing happened with me as with you wayne421
I had some archive DVD videos made on Ritek04 printable DVD media in 2002 .
So I wanted to make a copy of these and they are around 200 to 300 DVDs so its kind of production
I have Pioneer DVR-109 Burner and Toshiba Sd-1712 DVD Rom
So first i tried to Rip them with Toshiba and DVD Decryptor always gave up saying Read error So I used my DVR-106D and then it read it without a single error to a ISO and a 4.5 GB DVD to around 15 to 20 min avg rate 5x to 5.5x I was amazed
So I thought my Toshiba is old and as wanted to make so many DVDs I thoght I should upgrade both writer and reader.
Yesterday I got my NEC-3520 writer and Aopen 1648 AAP reader
After installing both I could not read any of those old DVDs on either of the new writer so I got terribly upset because instead of reading them faster the new drives were completely unable to read disks after wrestling for hours with cables and reinstalling Ide controllers and Chipset drivers the problem persisted So I tried again my old Pioneer DVR-106D and it came with sucess and read the same DVD Up to now out of 30 DVDs it could not read two and one I could salvage on the same burner using Iso Buster program but one is still unreadable.
The New NEC and Aopen could read my recently burned DVDs like TDK and TY very fast ( with lot of noise ofcourse)
So it seems that Pioneer uses a very good reading strategy or this laser is a miracle this saved my life. I wonder if the newer Pioneers like DVR108 and DVR-109 are also as good in reading like my good old Pioneer DVR-106D ( I had bought it two years back for a whooping 173€) And is it worth upgrading or buying a extra Pioneer DVR-109 just to speed up extraction.
Your suggestion would help
PS: I am returning my NEC-3520 and Aopen 1648 as they are useless for reading and I am still in two weeks returning period.
Is it worth to update to Pioneer DVR-109 ?

Thanks for sahring your uique experience and now I also add my exactly same experience in yours
Please keep update on what is happening with your back up project