digital rot?

[lordsmurf]

better treatment than any cmc media deserves

Pull!

[nic2k4]

Eh Webwalker, I just re-read your OP and 2 questions came to mind, where did you get those TY discs and how old is your burner?

You gotta be careful where you get your discs from, I remember a few years ago there was a bunch of fake Taiyo Yuden discs on the market. They had the right MID and when you opened the cake box, you'd get a whiff of that peachy smell TY's are famous for. I got a batch of those from Futureshop; they would burn ok on my Plextor 712, but they weren't anything like the true TY's I'd used before (I use to scan most of my discs with PxScan, back then).

An old burner won't burn as well as it used to, it's a case of the pits not being fully formed. How old is too old depends on how much usage it's seen (did you burn a bunch of discs at once, has it gone through 1000's of burns...), the environment it's in (temperature, dust, humidity...) and even the kinds of discs you use (RW's need more laser power). That Benq 1640 dates back around 2005; I don't know how long you've owned it, but I can tell you I just replaced a Pioneer I installed in 2007. It was burning DVD5 discs fine, but wouldn't burn DL discs. I took it apart and tried cleaning it, but that didn't help. So, I just replaced it, with drives costing $25, it's hard to justify risking your data.