Outlier
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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.
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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?
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On 10/21/2021 at 7:12 PM, dbminter said:
The WH16NS60 is as reliable as the lasers that are put into each unit. (A BD burner has 2 lasers: one for CD and DVD and the other for Blu-Ray.) By that, I mean I've had relatively 100% success rate except when the lasers are dying. For instance, earlier in the week, I swapped out an NS60 for a replacement because it failed twice in a row to burn BD-R. Swapping it out worked because the BD laser was dying.
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.
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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?
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10 hours ago, dbminter said:
Pioneer USED to be a good brand. But, starting around 4 years ago, they became junk. I had a Pioneer BD that lasted over 2 years
, the best performance I ever got out of an optical burner. The last Pioneer I had died after 2 months and I've never gone back to them. They also steadfastly refuse to address the improper write strategy for Ritek/Ricoh 8x DVD+RW in their firmware which prevents their use in Pioneer BD drives.
LG makes the best of the worst BD burners. They all have issues, but LG's WH16NS60 is the only BD burner I recommend and it does support M-Disc.
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?
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Lightning UK, you probably have alot of experience with burners. What's your recommendation for a BD burner that supports M-Disc?
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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.
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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...
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14 hours ago, LIGHTNING UK! said:
If your drive reports a read error at any point during the verification phase, I'd consider that disc to be a little suspect, even if it eventually managed to read the problem sectors after x retries.
Different drives are more/less capable at reading problem sectors than others, so it may totally fail in another drive or it may not show an error at all. Verification is good for that drive at that moment in time.
I guess it wouldn't hurt to retry the burn at 4x, the drive might do a better job of burning it. Please note that it's not ImgBurn claiming it can be burnt at 8x, it's the firmware in your drive. ImgBurn can't do anything your drive isn't programmed for - that's the purpose of the drive's firmware... to control all of the burn parameters for every different media.
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...
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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.
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On 2/9/2017 at 11:21 AM, LIGHTNING UK! said:
The program usually asks the drive to return 32 sectors worth of data at a time - it's quicker. If that request fails, it asks for 1 sector at a time from the same range to try and read as much as possible and find the actual bad sector. It's possible (as is the case here) that the drive manages to read the 'problem' sector(s) when asked to read them again. So think of it as a built in 'retry' mechanism - but it's not a real 'retry' and doesn't get logged as such.
I'd still be a little curious as to how well that disc actually burnt though and how readable it is. PIPO scan it if you're so inclined.
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?
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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.
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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.
So, I still think it's just the nature of the triple layer beast. Let's see how well you do with DL M-Disc.
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...
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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.
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Here’s what happened with my 3rd pack of BDXL M-Discs (5-packs):
DISC 1: Used Nero 2018 software, Pioneer 2209 (horizontal) & burned from files/folders -> Verification FAIL
DISC 2: Used Nero 2018, Pioneer 2209 (horizontal) & burned from a .ISO file -> Verification FAIL
(For disc 2, I realized I had burned it incorrectly because it burned the actual .iso file instead of the contents in it so I tried again with disc 3)
DISC 3: Used Nero 2018, Pioneer XS06 (horizontal) & burned (correctly) from a .ISO image file -> Verification FAIL
(For the first three discs, I had forgotten to test this with the drive set vertically so I did that for the rest)
DISC 4: Used ImgBurn, Pioneer 2209 (vertical) & burned from a .ISO file -> Verification FAIL
DISC 5: Used Nero 2018, Pioneer 2209 (vertical) & burned from a .ISO file -> Verification SUCCESS
So this time I got a 1/5 success rate. So out of the total, I got 5/15 successful burns using the BDXL (100 GB) M-Discs. This truly is a hit or miss thing. One thing I should mention is that the file/folders I’m burning contain large video files (many are larger than 2 GB) and all of the verifications are failing when it's trying to read one of those large video files. Maybe the success rate would be higher if there were smaller file sizes involved. Who knows? I’ll probably try the 50 GB discs next.
Dbminter, is there a reason why you prefer the drive being vertical? Does it have an advantage in the burning process? Or is it just saving you space? I like the drive set vertically because it's saving me space. But how are you loading discs vertically? And aren’t you concerned that the disc might not be properly centered during the burning process when it’s vertical? There are lengthy discussions about mounting drives horizontally or vertically with some saying that over time, the writing heads might get affected with a vertical mount (due to gravity). Or I've read that if you've mounted your hard drive horizontally, then don't change it to vertical any time in the future (and vice-versa) because the disc might not be read properly. Any thoughts about that? I want these discs to last “1000 years” and I wouldn't want the burn process to get skewed in some manner that only lets the discs be played on the same drive that it was burned with. In 1000 years, I'd want the discs to be playable on any drive, whether horizontal or vertical. So again, do you see any advantage in the vertical position other than saving space?
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When not in use, I'm leaving the 2209 with the enclosure on top of the computer (since the power cord is kind of short). I also have a dual hard drive enclosure on top of the computer so to make them fit together, I orient the 2209 with enclosure vertically. But when I was burning the discs, I put the 2209 horizontally. I put it horizontally because that's how I thought internal burners were meant to be burned and all my previous internal burners were horizontal inside the computer. I'll try vertically when I receive the new discs. By the way, both Pioneer burners have had no problem burning single layer M-Disc DVD's (5 GB size), 100% success rate for both of them and the DVD's were Verbatim. I'm still deciding which burner to keep and which to return.
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I received the Pioneer BDR-2209. I found it faster than than the BDR-XS06. The BDR-XS06 burned my BDXL M-Disc in about 2 hours and the BDR-2209 burned the same image in 1 hour. There's an optional power adapter you can get that would make the XS06 quicker but I only used the supplied USB cable. The 2209 also has the auto eject and auto reload feature when verifying and that was pretty convenient. The disadvantage I found is that the 2209 is significantly larger and heavier than the XS06. It's taking up a lot more space than anticipated. As for burning results, out of 5 BDXL M-Discs this is what happened:
Using the BDR-2209:
Disc 1) Burned from files/folders -> SUCCESS
Disc 2) Burned from files/folders -> Verification FAIL
Disc 3) Converted the content that was supposed to go into disc 2 into an .iso file -> SUCCESS
Disc 4) Burned from an .iso file (different than disc 3) -> Verification FAIL
I then tried burning the same .iso file from the failed disc 4 using the BDR-XS06:
Disc 5) Burned the .iso file that was supposed to go into disc 4 -> Verification FAIL
These verification fails appear to all occur with larger video files (larger than 1 GB). So this really does seem to be a hit or miss thing. I'm planning to make one final try. I was trying to see if the M-Disc creators, Millenniata, had their own original discs to sell but I guess all of their BDXL discs are under the Verbatim name. The Millenniata site does recommend Nero so I might just give that a try but I have a feeling I'll get a similar result. I only need about 2 more, so if I could get a 2/5 success rate I'd be content with that.
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To summarize what happened to the 5 BDXL M-discs I bought (for $97.21 including tax), these were my results:
0/1 with the Asus BW-16D1HT
0/1 with the LG BU40N
2/3 with the Pioneer BDR-XS06
Considering the cost of these particular discs, I want to make sure I have the most reliable drive. So I went ahead and bought that Pioneer BDR-2209 internal drive as well as the Vantec NST-536S3-BK NexStar DX USB 3.0 External Enclosure that you mentioned earlier, dbminter. I'll post what I find. It supposedly comes with Cyberlink software, is it worth giving that a try? Or just stick with ImgBurn? (considering that I want to limit my experimentation because of the cost of these discs)
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If it makes no difference burning files or an ISO, then was it just luck that one worked for me and the other didn't? Any possible explanation? If I'm going to be burning discs and relying on luck that it works, then maybe I should reconsider buying the expensive BDXL blu-rays discs and getting smaller sizes instead like just a regular blu-ray M-disc.
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This burning thing is not so consistent. I tried burning a 2nd blu-ray disc (BDXL M-Disc) and the burn process completed successfully but the verification failed again at a large video file. I tried again with another disc but this time I created an image .ISO file of the folders that I wanted backed up. I then burned the blu-ray disc from that .ISO file and it worked (including the verification). Is burning from an .ISO file more reliable than burning from the actual files? Or are they equally reliable and it's just a hit or miss thing?
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The "Cycle Tray Before Verify" in the Write tab is indeed checkmarked for me.
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I don't know what the settings were when I was burning the disc but when I checked just now, under the "Eject Tray After" options, none of the boxes were checked. But I'm 100% sure the disc was ejected from the internal slim LG and the external slim Pioneer after the burning was done and before verification (and I didn't alter any of those settings ever). The first time it happened it surprised me because I didn't know that would happen so it ended up staying ejected and waiting for me for a long time. The second time, I was waiting for it and reloaded the disc as soon as it happened.
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I believe I do have ImgBurn set to automatically eject and reload media after an automatic verify after burn but I'm not 100% sure. Where would those settings be located? In my case, when the verification started, it ejected the disc and there was a pop-up message saying that the disc needed to be manually reloaded and the message also said that this is normal if using a drive from some laptops (I'm assuming those are slim drives too). So yeah, after the burn process was over the disk was ejected and I had to manually reload the disc when the verification started. I didn't mind because I was checking frequently. But I guess this could be an issue if you're burning something overnight.
I got the BDR-XS06 from Amazon. There are a few 3rd party sellers but I specifically got mine from Amazon and the one I got appeared to already have the latest firmware (version 1.10) so I didn't have to install anything. My record with it is just 1 out of 1 so far. Maybe I was just lucky and there are more errors to come. I'll post if anything else comes up...
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I just want to report that I was able to successfully burn a BDXL M-disc blu-ray disc using my new external blu-ray drive, the Pioneer BDR-XS06. The burn operation completed successfully and the verification completed successfully. The problem .mov file played fine in the Pioneer and when I put the blu-ray disc back into my internal LG BU40N, that same file played fine. So it seems the correct choice of blu-ray drive to burn the disc made the difference (and of course, the right choice of program too ImgBurn). I've got decades of photos and videos that I wanted to archive and now hopefully the discs will last a long time (supposedly 1000 years with the M-discs). So the trial and error costed me 2 discs, but expensive discs ($20 x 2 = $40). Hopefully this thread will help someone else out in the future...
Correctable uncorrectable L-EC read errors?
in ImgBurn Support
Posted
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.