How many times you can rewrite DVD +/- RW ?

[donpedro]

I was wondering.... I am using same +RW disk for my tests all over again and again (since I am new in this, it's only about 6 time). If I am not mistaken RW disks should be able to be erased 1000 times.

But what is real life of RW media ?

And is there difference between +RW and -RW ?

Any personal experience of what is your average reuse nuber ?

[bartman]

As far as I can understand, the + and - formats use the same basic technology but go about it in different ways and are incompatable. It 'could' be possible to make a + drive write - disks and vice versa by re-programming the drive on how to burn each format (and Sony has done just that with it's new +- drive)

RW's can be re-written around 1000 times....if you ever get to that many though, let me know because I've never seen anyone do it yet (even with CD-RW). In my experience the disk tends to get little scratches all the time...even though I take care. Over time the disk becomes too scratched and I go buy another...the most I've ever re-written a disk is around 100 times for a test VCD I had....

[snowmoon]

I have often gotten close to 100-150 rewrites on cd-rw. I bet it could have gone much longer, but it was sneakernet so it got a lot of handleing.

I've rewritten this one dvd-rw a couple dozen times without problem yet.

[donpedro]

I have one additional question. I noticed that when you erase media, there are 2 options. Quick or Full. I use quick almost always and Full only when I feel like I used quick too many times. I guess quick will erase only references to blocks on disk (I don't know how it is called) and full goes through whole disk.

Is it OK to use only quick erase ?

[bartman]

full erase is good if you want to wipe all the data on the disk (it overwrites all blocks with the same value. Quick erase will only do the lead in, which has all the info about the disk on it. I normally use quick erase all the time and haven't found any problems yet.

[donpedro]

Great... Thanks ! So I still can erase it 994 times...