In article <slrng5jv7c.h0j.gsm@cable.mendelson.com>, Geoffrey S. Mendelson <gsm@mendelson.com> wrote: > > > verbatim data life plus are not outsourced and should be the same > > everywhere. the cheapo verbatims can vary. > > Thanks, I never knew that. > > What I have seen is that the disks seem to be blue or yellow. I assume > that is the color of the dye that gets burned. Yellow (also gold/silver) > disks work better for me in older drives.
the blue discs are the data life plus and are very good. in fact, they're often called verbatim blues because of the dye colour. it's their own formula (called azo), and as far as i know, only they make discs with it. i've never used the other verbatim discs and have no idea what colour those are.
but you make a very important point. it's not so much which disc is best, but which *combination* of burner/disc/reader. a disc that works great in one drive might not work well in a different drive (e.g., an older one).
i had an old ricoh burner that would not even *recognize* ritek discs (one of the major taiwanese manufacturers who source for just about everyone), let alone burn to them. it's been to long to recall if it just spit the disc out or if it spun and spun trying to figure out what was in there, but those very same discs worked quite well in a plextor burner without any problems.
> > also, most discs these days are optimized for the higher burn speeds > > and burning too slow is actually worse than burning closer to their > > rated speed. > > The TEAC blanks I use are marked 12x-52x, but they burn fine at 1x.
sure, they'll burn fine, but if you look at the actual raw error rate of the disc you'll probably see that it's much higher when burned at the slowest speeds versus burning at the higher speeds. the errors are correctable so the disc 'works' and is readable, but since it has a higher error rate, it's a little closer to failing.
if you want to burn at 1x, look for music cds. they're designed to be used in set top burners (attached to a home stereo, not a computer) which record real time and they're optimized for 1x burns. unfortunately, they're more expensive due to the music industry 'tax.'
