Outlier

I'm willing to sacrifice a disc for peace of mind. The issue right now is finding a blu-ray burner that burns BDXL but that does NOT burn M-Discs. The two seem to go hand in hand. If you find a burner that burns BDXL but not M-Discs, please feel free to post it here.

I'm thinking of buying a cheap and returnable non M-Disc burner just to find out. What should happen if trying to burn an M-Disc on a non M-Disc burner? Can a non M-Disc burner even read M-Discs? Because if it can't even read it, then I imagine you'd get the error "Incompatible Media Type" when trying to open it in ImgBurn and in that case you wouldn't waste the disc.

So far the LG WH16NS60 is holding up. I've burnt about 8 blu-rays that are M-Disc 50 GB and I have a 100% success rate. I'm about to start burning 100 GB blu-rays now. This may be off the topic of this thread but is there any way to tell in ImgBurn or anywhere else if the discs I bought are actually M-Disc? The 100 GB M-Disc Verbatim's I just bought don't have the usual Verbatim labels on them. The Disc ID says: VERBAT-IMk-000 but is there anywhere it should say "M-Disc" somewhere?

What do you mean by "swapped out an NS60 for a replacement"? Does that mean you bought another NS60 burner to replace your old NS60? Anyway, I followed your advice and bought the WH16NS60. As I'm waiting for it to arrive, I re-read your post and it's concerning me that you say that the lasers can sometimes die. How long does it take for a laser to die and how would you know when that's happening? I always thought that the writing methods on burners were more "permanent", not like a pencil that needs sharpening or a pen that runs out of ink.

Most of the 100 GB blue-ray disks are made by Verbatim. So do you think it would be a good idea to go with a burner made by Verbatim? Like the one at the top of this list: https://www.bestreviews.guide/external-m-disc-burner Is that a good idea or does it not make a difference?

Dbminter, do you have a high burn success rate with that LG WH16NS60? I'm going to be burning several 100 GB M-Discs and those aren't cheap. I'd like a good recommendation for a reliable M-Disc burner. What makes you feel that one is the best? Did you compare it with other models?

Lightning UK, you probably have alot of experience with burners. What's your recommendation for a BD burner that supports M-Disc?

Well what do you know, the same files burned perfectly fine and Verified perfectly fine using a different burner! Yes, it failed with my PIONEER_BD-RW_BDR-209M but was successful with my HL-DT-ST BD-RE BU40N. And this was a M-Disc 100 GB BD which are not cheap to experiment with. I guess the actual burner makes a whole lot of difference. It's kind of a bummer because I thought the Pioneer that I had was a pretty good brand.

Just to keep you posted, the M-Disc BD-R TL (100 GB) re-burn at 4x burned successfully in the first step, but had errors during Verification. But these errors were not "correctable" and so I had to cancel the operation. The burn was done with my Pioneer BDR-209M with the latest 1.54 Firmware. I'm re-trying the burn again but this time with my built-in LG BD-RE BU40N. I set the same write speed at 4x. I'm hoping for better results with a different burner...

Lightning UK, what is your recommendation for the write speed to burn an M-Disc BD-R TL (100 GB) disc? 4x? or less than that? I care more about accuracy than speed, please let me know what you would suggest...

Actually I just tried testing the file in question corresponding to the error. It's a video file. When I play it on the disc, the video gets stuck at a certain time point. Even after ejecting and re-inserting the disc, the video still gets stuck at the same time point. So even though ImgBurn said there were 0 Read Errors (with 1 retry), there was apparently still an error. So I'm guessing that the safest way to burn discs is to make sure there are absolutely no hitches during the Verification (no retries, etc.) even if it says that the Verification eventually completed successfully. I will re-burn the files. Lightning UK, I have seen you suggest burning DL discs at a write speed of 4x. Do you suggest this when I try again? The disc is an M-Disc BD-R DL (50 GB), the label says it's capable of 6x, but ImgBurn apparently believes it to be capable of 8x.

I just had a BD-R DL burn without error, but when verifying it showed an error: "Failed to Read Sector 12699456 - Reason: L-EC Uncorrectable Error" I then clicked to "Retry" and then there were no problems and it says 0 Read Errors (1 Retry). Since it does say 0 Read Errors, can I assume that the disc is fine? Here are the relevant lines of the log file: 20:03:48 Image File File System(s): ISO9660, Joliet, UDF (2.60) 20:03:48 Read Speed (Data/Audio): MAX / MAX 20:03:49 Read Speed - Effective: 3.3x - 8x 20:03:49 Verifying Session 1 of 1... (1 Track, LBA: 0 - 23331583) 20:03:49 Verifying Track 1 of 1... (MODE1/2048, LBA: 0 - 23331583) 20:03:49 Verifying Layer 0... (LBA: 0 - 12219391) 20:21:49 Verifying Layer 1... (LBA: 12219392 - 23331583) 20:24:00 Failed to Read Sectors 12699456 - 12699487 - Reason: L-EC Uncorrectable Error 20:24:07 Failed to Read Sector 12699456 - Reason: L-EC Uncorrectable Error 20:24:07 Sector 12699456 maps to File: \MyFolder\Subfolder\file.mp4 20:24:25 Retrying (1)... 20:24:27 Verifying Sectors... 21:04:54 Exporting Graph Data... 21:04:54 Graph Data File: C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\ImgBurn\Graph Data Files\PIONEER_BD-RW_BDR-209M_1.54_TUESDAY-OCTOBER-19-2021_7-37_PM_VERBAT-IMf-000_MAX.ibg 21:04:54 Export Successfully Completed! 21:04:54 Operation Successfully Completed! - Duration: 01:01:04 21:04:54 Average Verify Rate: 12,739 KiB/s (2.9x) - Maximum Verify Rate: 34,437 KiB/s (7.8x) The write speed was set at 8x. Should I re-burn it at 4x just to be certain? Or does that not make a difference since the error occurred during Verification? Is there a way to set the Verify Rate?

Thanks for the info. I wish I knew about the firmware update before doing all that expensive testing . If the problem is with the 100 GB disc media itself, how much of a difference do you think a firmware update would make? Anyway, I've decided to keep the 2209 and return the XS06 (in large part due to the recommendations in this thread). I just upgraded the firmware to 1.50 but I don't have any more 100 GB discs to test. I only have a few more folders to backup anyway and they're each less than 50 GB. I do plan to make photo/video backups every year from now on so maybe I'll try the triple layer discs again after the year is over.

To update the thread, I burned four double layer 50 GB Verbatim M-Discs and all of them were successful (including verification), 4/4. All of the single layer 25 GB discs were successful too and I tested over 10 of those. I agree with you. The 100 GB discs are probably still in the infancy stages. I'll probably just use the 25 GB or 50 GB discs from now on. It was an expensive lesson to learn and hopefully someone else learns from it. Maybe in a few years from now, the 100 GB discs will be more reliable. If someone else has a different experience with them, hopefully they will post it here...

I was just kidding about the "1000 years." I just want them around long enough until I reach old age and if I have kids, their old age, and if they have kids, their old age, and so on. Beyond my parents' black and white photos, I don't know what their daily lives were like before I was born since there are no videos of them. And I have no clue about what their parents looked like or what ancestors beyond that looked like or what their life stories were about. It's kind of funny, but this process has made me think & take a deeper look at life, why I'm doing things and ultimately who I'm doing it for, how long do I think I'm going to live, if I'm going to have kids, etc. LOL. Your comment about the Godzilla movie reminded me of the Star Trek captain from the Next Generation (actor Patrick Stewart). That series was supposedly set hundreds of years in the future. I would have thought hundreds of years in the future there'd be a cure for baldness but apparently there wasn't in that series. Anyway, I should note that it only seems to be the enclosure that was designed to be vertical and the companies who design enclosures probably realize their customers are concerned about space. But the Pioneer 2209 drive itself was meant to go inside a computer and all the computers I've owned have had the DVD/Blu-ray drives mounted horizontally. So this is debateable. I really only became interested when I saw that my last successful burn happened when it was vertical.