Copy Protection Killing DVD-RW's?

I've seen people discussing copy protection schemes killing DVD-RW's on this forum before, and it's never affected me. Yesterday ( yes, Friday 13th :P ) my DVD writer started erroring whenever I try to burn a DVD, and I'm using a set of new DVD's so it's hard to know if the discs are crap, the drive is dead or something else.

So if anyone has any information on removing these copy protection drivers that kill drives, that would be great. I'd really like to discount duff media and software problems before I go out and buy a new drive. They might be cheap but they're still inconvenient to install ( particularly in a crammed case. )

On second look, it appears that I just bought 100 coasters. I found a few verbatim left around unburned and they burn fine. So it looks like it was just a hundred duff discs.

Made me laugh... the turn of phrase, not the misfortune.

Rules of Media:
1. Never buy the cheap stuff... spend the extra $0.09 (or whatever...) a disk
2. NEVER NEVER buy from discount stores... even if you recognize the brand name (the possibility of FAKE disks increases in proportion to the discount!)
3. Keep all R and RW etc. disks FACE DOWN away from DIRECT SUNLIGHT (even the CDs you buy that were commercially made!) This will help the burn longer.

I know you all know #3 but I am stating the obvious

But that is my hobby!

: )

Captain Obvious, indeed. These were ( relatively ) expensive, supposedly high-quality discs. Datawrite Titaniums, and if I could have found a shop stocking the Optima Blue, it would have been those instead.

I dunno about coasters. On monday morning, the guy who sold them to me may well be using them as suppositories.

4) After buying them. Open them at the counter and look for scratches there and then, and if you find any get replacements. It is important to not move from the counter, no matter what crap the store gives you, unless the manager promises to exchange faulty ones. (Used to well pissoff Fnac)

Um... Stupid question, but you do know that there are two types of discs, DVD-RW and DVD+RW, and that not all drives are compatible with both?

Most of the newer drives are dual-format and can handle both of them, but many older drives are not.

Also, if you're burning video DVD's, it's quite possible that even if your computer can handle both formats, your set-top DVD player may only be able to read one of the two formats and not detect the other one.

Yes, I do. My burner burns all types, but I only use -RW and -R because they're more compatible.


It's not an issue of playback. Nero throws an error trying to write to the discs. Either the discs are screwed or the drive is. And since I burned perfectly to the only surviving Verbatim I could find, I'm betting on the discs. The first four I burned were pretty iffy too ( they worked, but the drive was spinning up and down as it had trouble reading them. )

So the moral of the story is that Datawrite Titanium are the worst kind of junk I've ever seen. I have never, in all my years of burning CD's and DVD's come across a disc this bad. I've probably only ever burned three or four coasters ever, because I only buy high quality media and only burn at low speeds.

MInd you that doesnt mean the discs are totaly "off", if the drive is on its way out. Before you start to put your coffee cups on them do try them in someones "new" drive.

I have no reason to believe the drive *is* on it's way out now, since it burns perfectly with other media. It's been burning beautiful discs until I bought these two tubs of discs. The only reason I suspected the drive is because I've never come across a disc so bad that Nero wouldn't even begin to write to it. Now I have, and they're going back to the shop first thing Monday morning.

different media effect drives differently. My PS2 no longer plays DVDs.. and it won't play PS2 games unless it is upright. It plays ps1 games no matter how I lay the system.

If the other disks were DVD+ and these were DVD- ... or. one was R and the other RW... then it might still be the drive.. test them elsewhere before you ditch them.

I already said they weren't different.


I also said that playing wasn't an issue. They don't even begin to burn.

I bought some new DVD-R's and I'm also having trouble burning to them. The burning does complete but when you try to copy stuff off the disc it says Cyclic Redundancy Check or somethin. I've got a DVD-RW and it burns/reads fine, same with the tons of CD-R's I got.

Do you know what speed the media is rated for?

trying to burn at 16x to 8x media results in coasters as well.

Yes. They're rated for 8X. They fail to burn at 8X, 4X and 2.4X which are the only speeds that the media and burner as a combination permit. I believe Nero detects the speed of the disc, because it won't let me even attempt to burn them at over 8x, whereas it will let me burn Verbs ( rated at 16x ) at any speed up to 16x.


Yes it would, but as I said, I don't get as far as burning anything. They are coasters because they won't burn, not because they won't work after they've been burned.

Keep them Gabriel. The next drive you get will probably burn them fine. I've found different burners favor different media. Once you find a brand your drive 'likes' and your players handle fine it's best to stick with it. I've even had a drive fail to detect a certain brand of blank, which detects fine and burns perfect in a different drive. Also, if you can, steer clear of any -r discs. The situation could have changed but I recall there were some heated discussions I read about the longetivity and reliability of -r discs.

I cannot believe this thread is still going!

Can anyone else not see what Gabs is saying, or is it just me!?!

Dabz

Here Gabriel states:

and then:

From what I gather, the discs don't like his drive, or vice-versa. Different blank or drive will probably 'fix' the problem, or am I missing something?

Then...



So...



Job done! Or have I missed something? ;) <--Notice the wink

Fair do's, he could keep the blank media, but come on, if you buy something and it doesnt work, you dont just store it. Especially when it can be replaced or refunded!

Dabz

Now there's a curious thing...

I've been having problems burning DVDs this morning myself. My DVD writer (which has never spat a bad disc in over two years of service) suddenly decided it didn't like a DVD-R. I got suspicious when it had a hissyfit at another two discs immediately after that.

Turned out that it wasn't the discs at all, or the hardware. It was Windows Defender, which was doing a scan in the background and preventing Nero from writing to anything other than its internal buffer - nothing had got as far as the DVD itself.

Yeah. I keep forgetting Dabz. Warranty claims on small consumable items like this can be a lot more hassle than they are worth where I am.

If I were to take the time to return them and they tested fine in the shop I would not get a refund. If they didn't test fine, a lot of the time they will be 'sent away for testing' which could take months. Depends on the shop, but warranty claims in Australia can be painful, which makes it difficult to decide whether the time spent doing it is worthwhile with respect to the price of the original purchase.

I'd probably get better results where I am by selling them to a friend who has a compatible burner;)

I'm the sort of bloke who shouts 'chocolate' at the top of my voice like sloth from the goonies when shopping with my G/F, so demanding a refund is a no-brainer, but the UK's fine with stuff like that anyway!

Reminds me of the time when I was a kid, me and a few mates bought some water pistols from the local newsagents, filled em up and mine didnt work, I went stomping back in to the shop and told the bloke it was broke, whilst demostrating by pulling the trigger!

Surfice to say, the pistol was pointed at him, and it also decided to work right there and then! :)

Poor man got soaked, and you should of seen his face! Me and my mates still laugh about it now! :D

Happy days

Dabz

Heh. You're lucky. My gf will not be impressed if I get too vocal at anyone in public. lol

I agree, Gabriel should go for the refund or swap 'em for a different brand.

Thank god, I thought it was just me!

I get TDK after reading about there only being a couple of high quality disk manufacturers and they were one of them, who also supply many other brands with disks. So I started using theirs. You can get 50 for about $15 here but those are DVD-R. I just use a HD with an external USB enclosure most of the time.

I've burned a lot of TDK's with this drive, and never had a problem. I wouldn't use them for really important stuff, but they're fine for general use. At the moment, I really need something I can trust to backup data and expensive imported PS2 games. For that, I really only trust the best. Normally I buy Ritek's, anything with the G05 dye. I wanted DataWrite Optima Blue's which have the G05 Ritek dye, but the best they had were the Titanium and I'd read a lot of great reviews. I don't know, maybe the shop ( it's a new shop ) is a bunch of rip-off merchants. Maybe they put cheap full-face printables in DataWrite titanium tubs. If so, they do a good job because they found replacements with the same purple dye the titaniums use. Maybe they just got a bad batch. Either way, I won't buy any discs from the shop again, and I won't buy any DataWrites ever again either.

Tomorrow I have a very long journey to the nearest shop which sells Riteks, I guess.

I had alot of trouble with verbatim's on my old cd-rw. I think compatibility plays a minor part in what media you can use with a drive. I have an imation DVD-RW which I used to burn the Vista RC1 to, first time it wouldnt read back the disc so I burnt it at a lower speed and it worked flawlessly.

I think some of the major factors in getting good media results are:

- Burning without programs workin the the background. Keeps the memory buffer/disk buffers free for burning.

- Compatible media.

- Possibly burning at lower speeds if you are getting coasters.

- Use of technology such as Underbuffer Run and such.

Yeah, I learned that the hard way, the generic brand DVD-R/RWs are by far the worst. I was at Circuit City doing this a couple of years ago, got two 100-packs, one DVD-R, and the other DVD+R (I have a multiformat/dual-layer DVD burner), and tried to burn some archives from some video edits that I have done, and no can do, it doesn't even recognize the fact that it IS a recordable disc, if you find that hard to believe. What was the brand, ESA? Yeah, definitely a generic brand.

My DVD-burner is even stranger, it rarely manages to burn a DVD and when it does it takes ages. CD are a bit better. In the box it says Windows & Mac compatible.

Now if I boot into Linux and use K3b, not only it burns everything fast and well, still hasn't failed once. I find this slightly odd as I would have expected a Windows compatible device to work under Windows.

NOTE: I only use DVD to backup data, mainly photos & drawings, it would make me angry to find out that somebody in some multinational company has decided that MY photos can't be copied, even if not registered I consider myself the only copyright holder of my work.

DVD's rectally inserted and money returned this morning, and I got a ride out to Novatech where I bought 200 Riteks, which I'm confident will all burn flawlessly, as another five verbatim I found last night did.

LMAO!!! :D

Dabz