The worst CD media you ever had

[130T|_|L15/\/\]

Since there have been many posts regarding "the best cd media" I have decided to do the worst CD media.

Please post the worst CD media (with manufacturer and dye information) you have ever encountered. If possible add where the CD media was made in for the description.

[ZippyP.]

Memorex cd-rw's, buncha crap. Took 'em back.

[p_l]

Cursor , available at FutureShop. Never again.

[puertorican138]

Memorex.

[puertorican138]

Ultimate Quality.

[poonaner]

i can honestly say iv never had a REAL bad experience with media.

guess im lucky

-dave

[WienieMan]

Memorex 4X CD-RWs = worst ever
their High Speed RWs are good though

[Mirror_Image]

This is just my experience, but the junkiest CD-R media - a toss-up between Ritek and Memorex.

[mrdisky]

Having a few thousand CDRs dating back to when i bought my first Yamaha burner used for $800 I can honestly say no problems until recently when I got a 50 pack of Compusa black (like olatstation) CDRs, absolutely GARBAGE burned perfectly all 50 of them, unfortunately like clockwork within a couple months of burning them they would become unreadable, not one but all 50!! After discovering this I scrambled to save what i could, literally gigabytes of downloads and captured videe was lost due to the poor quality JUNK CDRs!

I will never again buy any compusa media, no matter what! I could have accepted a few as junk, but the entire spindle? Might not be the rule, but i for one will never even consider using these again....


Oh yeah and as a side note I forgot, the crappy 4x memorex CDRWs, I bought like 30 of them and so far about half have failed to erase and become useless after one burn/erase attempt...

[MOVIEGEEK]

Ditto on the Memorex 4x R/W....rewrites 5 times then its off to the coffee table.
The generic "Great Value"media from Frys is coaster material too.

[LanEvo7]

You people should really mention the manufaturing plant that makes the dye, not the brand. The same brand could have both high quality and low quality cds depending on where the dye was manufactured.

As for me, the worst cdr I've ever had was unbranded CDR's made by CMC Magnetics with cyanine dye(forgot serial). Horrible, burned vcds with them, they would skip on the first time they were played. After left around for about 6 months to 1 year, the data would become semi-unreadable. Salvaged what I could and chucked them in the trash.

[sterno]

There were so many people who had that exact type of problem with CMC discs that if you do a web search you may still turn up some "write-once, read-once" jokes. Their current production seems to be OK, though, as long as you take care of the discs. It looks like most of the cheap media on store shelves is CMC now, including some big names like Imation and Phillips.

So far the main discs that have caused me problems are some TDK 4x CD-RWs (mfg. ID is unrecognized). TDK CD-R media is fine, I've burned quite a lot of it with no problems at all. These CD-RWs are mediocre at best, though. They're acceptable for temporary data storage, but I can't actually burn a full 700MB. Out at the edge of the disc it's not reliable, and I've used two different burners and a couple different speeds. Video is (naturally) even worse, they work just well enough for me to do some basic testing to make sure the picture and sound are OK. These discs have never been mistreated or exposed to any extremes of climate, but even so I have one disc where the metal layer peeled and flaked off at the edge when I picked it up.

I've burned quite a number of CompUSA generic CD-Rs and never had a problem, but I've never used black CD-Rs of any brand. I don't think any of the good manufacturers make those, though.

[Super Warrior]

Since there have been many posts regarding "the best cd media" I have decided to do the worst CD media.

Please post the worst CD media (with manufacturer and dye information) you have ever encountered. If possible add where the CD media was made in for the description.

Well i've only ever used two brands of CD-R media.One of them was Memorex.Best damn CD-R media there is! The other was Cendyne.Blehh! What crap.Worst media i've ever owned.I permanetly stuck to memorex CDR ever since.

Although oddly enough a few years later whenever i bought my own PC.When i deceided to get a Internal CD-RW drive,i took a chance with a Cendyne drive because it was cheap.And i love it! The Cendyne Lightning II 32X CD-RW drive is great.

[Faustus]

Anything under 6 or 7 dollars back when I first saw a CD burner. And a random unbranded unlabled 100 pack I got at Microcenter for $15, not one of them could read back an full disk after being burned.

[DVantrease]

I've had the worst luck with 'store brands', which I admit is no surprise. Tried both CircuitCity and CompUSA because they were free after rebate. They weren't even worth 'free' because of the time I lost, after 5 out of 5 coasters even at 1x, I returned them. I've had very good luck with whatever 'namebrand' is on sale, I regularly get Imation 50-pack for under $2 after rebate.

[SatStorm]

in my country and in certain places, you can buy cheap CD-Rs of some well known brands. The problem is that those brands are Fake!!!!
You see, all this stock in US and UK and Germany, somehow must be sold. So, you add a ticket and that's it...
I have see many fakes Creation CDRs, Memorex, Smart Buy, Samsung, etc, over the years. I don't know who is behind this. The Shops or the ones who import the brands, or all toghether.. Expecially in the Bulk market, the "fake" is the rule here...

[mats.hogberg]

As I've never made a Memorex coaster (but Memorex stands for a majority of "bad media" reports here), it seems like there's different batches with warying quality of the same brand floating around, or that different hardware work fine with different CD-Rs. Probably a combination of these. So as with most in this business: Trial and error! And you've got to make your own.

/Mats

[trillium]

ditto on the Memorex...backing up data was impossible!

[ptmurphy]

I have to toss my vote in for Memorex also. Neither the -R or +R media will work in my Sony drive. Never had problems with other media, but have never been able to get Memorex media to work at all.

[sterno]

As I've never made a Memorex coaster (but Memorex stands for a majority of "bad media" reports here), it seems like there's different batches with warying quality of the same brand floating around, or that different hardware work fine with different CD-Rs.

Memorex buys their CD-Rs from whichever OEM is cheapest. I think I've seen Memorex-branded discs in the US that appeared to be from Taiyo-Yuden, Ritek, and CMC. Taiyo-Yuden is widely considered one of the best major manufacturers, and CMC is widely considered one of the worst (Ritek is somewhere in between). They're often side-by-side on store shelves, too.

[LanEvo7]

Memorex is a toss up. You never know what you are going to get.

[ben_nevada]

I'm happy to get so much information about CD media quality, something I would not have discovered myself for lack of time. Is there a way to tell who the OEM of the disks and dye makers is? Can someone tell me what the colors mean- black and others...? Thanks again.

[TheInformer]

Ricoh without a doubt. Absolute crap!

[pacmania_2001]

Worst media by far is a pack of 100 unbranded (silver on both sides) cd's.

I use them for disposable CD's as they lose their data after about a week. Add that to the fact that you have to burn them at 8x speed they really suck.

Just yesterday I burnt a music cd onto one, after 2 hours of playing I could hear the corruption.

[tgpo]

Durabrand! The crappiest cd-rs sold at wal-mart. I bought a spindle of 50 and was able to burn to 5 of them. I threw the rest away.

[LanEvo7]

The thing is, if you buy retail from a big name company like memorex or fuji, they'll replace the discs without questions. If you buy oem, then your taking your chances. But usually if you buy a good brand oem your fine, stay away for CMC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[puertorican138]

Ricoh without a doubt. Absolute crap!

Ricoh is HORRIBLE!!!

[puertorican138]

CD-R Plus is a bad choice also. The CD-R's got corrupted after only 3 days of use.

[RabidDog]

The best ? ricoh! never any problems also memorex is good... bad is princo (blue).

[energy80s]

The worst brand I've ever used was Datasafe Premium Silver - rarely made an actual VCD from them as they just burnt to about 140Mb and died!