The Unofficial HWZ Surviving DVD Media Durability Scan Thread

MacClipper

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Just thought of another way of approaching the subject matter which is hopefully more direct and constructive making it easier to understand for the casual reader. I think there are enough threads detailing which media is bad etc running into pages and pages referencing innumerable websites... this thread is more about media which has been shown to survive ie. Got Scan Can Talk!

CRITERIA
1. Media must be burned more than 6 months ago
2. 0 media sense errors
3. passed Transfer Speed test (a nice to have but optional requirement since standalone DVD machines play at only 1x speeds)
4. 0 PO Failures (? importance since POF doesn't always mean that the data is unretrievable)

SCANNING SETUP
1. Scanning burners - BenQ DW series (8x scan speed) recommended eg. 1620/1625/1640 since they can report PO failures (and jitter too). Other burners like Liteon (4x)/NEC (5x) models can also do error scanning but without PO Failure reports.
2. using CD-DVD Speed (freeware, latest version is 4.01), Click to download

If you do not own a BenQ DW16xx series burner, you are still welcome to post your scans too using other tools eg. good CD-DVD Speed Transfer Curves for non-error scanning models eg. LG burners.

You are also welcomed to add your own comments on the disc/media eg. rate of survival, label surface durability, pictures etc...

REASONING
If a disc can be read or scanned without CRC errors, data integrity is preserved at that moment in time and it is considered a survivor at that time. Let's not clog up this thread with arguments about how smooth or pretty a reading curve needs to be or how many times the disc needs to be read to get the data off. Let's keep it simple, clean and to the point here so thread readers do not have to pore through the whole thread just to get what's going on.

I will posting the scans of my own discs which has been stored in spindle cases (pressure effects) by my room window which is exposed to sunlight (UV exposure as well as increased heat). No special care has been taken of them cos I wanted to see the effect of accelerated ageing on the discs (which has no impt unique data, of course).

The scans will run against the current mood in this forum which has repeated ad nauseum that DVD media cannot survive long term - so I am prepared to be accused again of having a vested interest in optical media industry. Just for clarity, I am not in this or any IT related industry at all, my main line is totally non-related as those who know me on a personal basis can attest.

btw, bad scans does not always equate disc degradation cos you can always get a fresh bad burn (with a bad scan).

:)

Advisory
Anyway, just a little sidetrack to clarify my own stand that I am just a ODD fan without any commercial interests cos I am not even in the IT line at all. Here's MichaelTan of Convergent himself in his own words,

http://forums.vr-zone.com/showpost.php?p=745691&postcount=105
from this thread, click
MichaelTan said:
...The incredibly strange thing is, the people who are in the IT industry, meaning the people with a passion for hardware when they were kids and went ahead to look for a job to reflect their passion - meaning, go into the IT industry - now all kenna ban.
...
So who's left? I know only one (besides students), and that's Macclipper, who's not in the IT industry. Booest, Driftdriver, cyberazi, stratix, denniszz, corbell, Trichard, deathdealer, krado, P4CoverclockerII, oOKelvinOo, cannot post. Hell, Shamino cannot post...

Oh well, that's for all it's worth.

My rambling initial observations with regards to to longterm durability 3+ years down the line. (24/3/09).
1. Local SG climate (heat, sun, humidity...) is very harsh on DVD media, overseas findings are mostly not applicable here.
2. MIJ or MIS quality is not an impt factor.
3. Price is not an impt factor.
4. A beautiful inital burn scan is almost meaningless.
5. Outer edge degradation is a very common problem.
6. to be cond...

Since this sub-forum has been mercilously edited to kill off older threads losing valuable info, a sister thread has been stickied over at VRZ.
VRZ Sticky
 
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MacClipper

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April 2003 - Apple 2x MXL DVD-R (the 4x version has almost 100% failures after 6 months)

apple2xscansolo3pi.png
 

MacClipper

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Sept 2003 - Verbatim 2x DVD-R (batch prone to POF at the periphery)

mcc2xscan6zf.png
 

MacClipper

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Oct 2003 - Verbatim 2x DVD-R (batch prone to POF at the periphery).

verbatim2xscan5ok.png
 
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MacClipper

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May 2004 - TDK DVD-R (forgot which speed rating liao, no mention on the label)

tdkscan8gc.png
 

MacClipper

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wwenze said:
Just asking, passing transfer speed test = perfect graph?
Fair enough a question, as long as a media can pass a transfer test, the disc is deemed readable (and thus a survivor) so the curve does not have to be perfectly smooth. An error scan would definitely be more informative but in lieu of that, a successful transfer curve would suffice if you lack a scanning burner.

PS: ANY speed above 1x would do cos standalone players only run at 1x speed for movie playing. Besides, there is always the riplock to think about which results in diff. max speeds among different burners and not all burners have riplock free modded firmware.
 
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p4coverclockerII

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MacClipper said:
Fair enough a question, as long as a media can pass a transfer test, the disc is deemed readable (and so a survivor) so the curve does not have to be perfectly smooth. An error scan would definitely be more informative but in lieu of that, a successful transfer curve would suffice if you lack a scanning burner.

PS: ANY speed above 1x would do cos standalone players only run at 1x speed for movie playing. Besides, there is always the riplock to think about which results in diff. max speeds among different burners and not all burners have riplock free modded firmware.

However, a transfer rate curve which dips down for a considerable segment severely at the end or shows a constant low speed read withs ups and downs and never reaches the expected ideal curve implies deterioration or degradation.
 

p4coverclockerII

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I will be doing a mass scanning of my April 2005 batch of dvd discs in end December 2005 (this year). This batch of discs are stored in dry boxes with silica gel with conditions that are supposed to protect the discs. I hope to get good news from this batch of discs because by the time of Dec 2005, they will be already 8 months old. Hence, IF majority of this batch of discs shows no degradation or errors in Dec 2005, I will have a lot of surviving discs to add to this thread.
 

MacClipper

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I believe that as long as a disc is readable without CRC errors when scanned or read, data integrity is preserved at that moment in time and data integrity is the main point in data archival, not pretty scans or smooth transfer curves.

And for movie DVD backups, the main usage for a lot of people using recordable DVD, the movie should play back smoothly if you can get a perfect 1x transfer curve. Maybe you can do and post for us 1x transfer curves for those discs which do not have smooth max speed transfer curves.

How about it? We need someone with that kind of tenacity and with lots of time on his hands since 1x transfer curves (or even better, 1x error scans if that is possible) are going take an hour each. The good thing is that any DVD drive will do for 1x reading curves, even plain DVD ROMs for this test.

:)
 
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p4coverclockerII

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MacClipper said:
I believe that as long as a disc is readable without CRC errors when scanned or read, data integrity is preserved at that moment in time and data integrity is the main point in data archival, not pretty scans or smooth transfer curves.

And for movie DVD backups, the main usage for a lot of people using recordable DVD, the movie should play back smoothly if you can get a perfect 1x transfer curve. Maybe you can do and post for us 1x transfer curves for those discs which does not have smooth max speed transfer curves.

:)

DVD readers can have many read retries and read slowdowns to get a perfect read off the dvd without errors. But the disc has problems (i.e. degrade) (even without errors) because the reader has to do many read retries and read slowdowns. We are NOT looking for perfect or pretty graphs but this is a basic understanding that a disc has problems if several readers used have to employ many many read retries and read slowdowns to get data off the disc without errors.
 

MacClipper

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Come on, let's use our common sense here, if a transfer curve is that bad (with lots of slowdown and rereads) or the errors are sky high, let's trust the reader to use his brains to decide if that media is trustworthy enough. For that moment in time, the disc may be readable with data intact but we can probably expect it to fail later on but that's something like reading into the future - who dares say their disc last forever? Besides, if a disc needs to reread 10x before passing, can we blame only the disc and say nothing about the reader at all... we know that certain burners are barely passable at reading although they may be good at burning.

I will say it again, if a disc can be read or scanned without CRC errors, data integrity is preserved at that moment in time and it is considered a survivor at that time. Let's not clog up this thread with arguments about how smooth or pretty a reading curve needs to be or how many times the disc needs to be read to get the data off. You can do that in your own thread, let's keep it simple here so thread readers do not have to pore through the whole thread just to get what's going on.
 
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MacClipper

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p4coverclockerII said:
I will be doing a mass scanning of my April 2005 batch of dvd discs in end December 2005 (this year). This batch of discs are stored in dry boxes with silica gel with conditions that are supposed to protect the discs. I hope to get good news from this batch of discs because by the time of Dec 2005, they will be already 8 months old. Hence, IF majority of this batch of discs shows no degradation or errors in Dec 2005, I will have a lot of surviving discs to add to this thread.
Please try to keep in topic, you can post the pics when the scans are done but kindly keep all self thoughts to yourself till then. I will ask nicely again - let's keep the thread simple, clean and to the point.

Thank you.
 

MacClipper

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ralph79 said:
My first DVD burnt in Nov 2004
MIT Pinky MCC03

Not bad at all, the pinkies have been getting quite a bad rep in this forum and yours have a QS of 98!

Sept 2004, BenQ 8x +R
Have to show a read curve for this one since the PIEs are rather high. But the read curve is perfect at even 16x so data is intact for the moment. Will it survive and for how long? Ask me again perhaps in 6 month's time, I really can't predict the future. :D

daxonaz2scan3ca.png

daxonaz2transfer1ul.png
 

p4coverclockerII

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MacClipper said:
Please try to keep in topic, you can post the pics when the scans are done but kindly keep all self thoughts to yourself till then. I will ask nicely again - let's keep the thread simple, clean and to the point.

Thank you.

No problem. Just offering my argumentative point of view. I guess the explicitly worded thread title already automatically excludes the discussion of anything else but surviving discs, so I will keep myself in check and not go off topic now.

I apologize.
 
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