DVD-RW lifespan

[lj01]

I notice that I promised to report back in 2015 my results of using the Verbatim DVD+RW that I started using back in 2012. I'm two years late but...

Glad to say that the 2012 Verbatim DVD+RWs are still in use and I've not had any of the issues that I had previously experienced (within 2-3 years) of the Maxell/TDK that I mentioned earlier. I have heard that current Verbatims (of all varieties) are not the same as they were a few years ago, but for the record, my DVD+RW are at 5 years and no problems at all.

[elling]

I'm a bit late to the "party" but I wanted to chime in with my support for Verbatim RW, either + or - . I have had to retire most of my discs after 2 years' service (not daily burning). They have always played beautifully on my OPPO 971 standalone dvd player. I have been seeing a lot of "freezing" parts of videos (multiple) on just-burned +RW Verbatims and the frozen parts are not on the original recordings. Even though I am in the Seattle area I have not seen any ReWriteable Verbs in local B&M stores. I took a gamble on a 15 disc spindle of Maxell +RW from Fred Meyer. They are made by Ridata (I can run DVD Identifier if you want the p/n). So far, I'm not super impressed with the Maxell/Ridata quality. Plenty of freezing on a 2 week old disc that has been re-written 3-4 times, at most.

[cesar1020]

I feel like I'm in a time capsule.
These days I dusted a bunch of DVD backups from around 2002 to 2010 to find all of them unreadable.
Thank God, I also had this backups in HDDs which I have passed from computer to computer through all those years.
The falling media is from assorted brands and types, having all the same common characteristic: all are re-writable.

Sony CD-RW
Sony DVD+RW
Pengo CD-RW
Fujifilm DVD+RW

However these does work:

• Any original media, even the very first Visual Studio installer from 2002, or a Windows 95 installer on CD-R from, well, 1996 (25 year old!) can also be read.
• Verbatim DVD+R
• Verbatim CD+R
• Pengo CD+R
• TDK DVD+R

My conclusion is: rewritable media, be DVD or CD won't last.

[Seeker47]

Good example of an Old Thread that still has relevance -- at least for some of us. If, like myself, you happen to still be a regular user of the Pioneer DVDRs, the RW disc option (particularly for xfer to computer / external HDD) is going to be a tool you want to retain. My Go To choice for this had long been either the Verb or TDK (4X) -RW, now exceedingly difficult to obtain, or maybe even by now impossible. AFAIK, they were long proven to be the best -- and certainly the most compatible for the Pioneer recorders, which either need or do a lot better with the -RW than the +RW. (Can't recall whether the + is useable there at all. Maybe not.) I think the Pioneers, or at least circa the 520 series, could also use DVD-RAM discs, but good luck finding any of those in recent years ! A couple years ago, I bought a box of 10 TDK -RW (in individual jewel boxes) from somewhere in Europe, and you don't even want to know what they were charging for it . . . .

Ridata has pretty much always been CRAP, for most anything they make. Lots of testimonials on that here.

I always thought that the rewriteable tech was pretty sketchy -- even the "good" ones -- and never counted on the discs to last a long time. (Might be nice to get some reminder on that score from orsetto and lordsmurf.) Then again, it could be an iffy proposition to count on long term storage from your -R or +R discs either, from the original TY on down the quality scale. Those of us who have accumulated a big library of recorded material are going to find out, sooner or later. I have come across the occasional disc made quite a few years ago that has completely failed to be readable, like the gold-colored Plextor discs. (Long vanished into optical disc history, but remember those, whoever made them ?) If whatever was on them had been important enough, I might have given Isobuster a go at them, just for grins.

Any Blu-Ray media, or M-Disc "archival" media -- will those survive a long time, either ? Hardware obsolescence for reading them is another concern. For the more important stuff, what I've been trying to do is more in the realm of redundancy, primarily with two instances of an item, spread across two different HDDs. The optical storage media can just add another link in that redundancy chain.

[jagabo]

Nine years after my post #6 that Verbatim DVD+RW disc still verifies perfectly. Nero Discspeed 5's transfer rate test still shows a nice smooth graph. A Verbatim DVD+R disc with the same content is also fine. Of course, that's only one disc (of each type).

[johns0]

A lot of people burn a disc and thinks it's good cause the burning program says burned successful but never verified the burn so years later they try their disc and blame the disc going bad over the years,with rw discs they are a lot more prone to bad burns,any disc i burned and verified are still good after 20 years.