discuser

Thanks for that clarification which does help in determining what is happening at what level (software or drive hardware) when exception conditions occur. I wrote to a Verbatim BD-RE-DL disc earlier (the original Verbatim production runs that were truly made in Japan) which was erase-formatted with spare sectors enabled, but during the full-erase-format process, did not yield any errors at all. Coming out of that I assumed the disc formatted flaw free and proceeded to write data to it and it was during the write-with-verify phase that the Pioneer 09-drive reported a single write error, which I thought was strange but assumed it would be taken care of by spare sector replacement. So a single error would not have caused a spare sectors fully depleted condition. I let the write phase complete and when it got to the verify only phase (reading at 2X), it got to approximately the same spot in the data (I am guessing based on the percentage reading of how far through the entire length of the data), the verify error prompt popped up and repeated retries did not resolve the problem. So I aborted the verify retry and abandoned the disc. I'm going to use a different Verbatim BD-RE-DL and repeat the entire erase-formatting with spare sectors enabled and then rewrite the data to it. This time I will try using the Pioneer 06-drive instead to see if it makes any difference. So it would seem based on what you describe the expected behaviour would be, the write error is an anomaly of unknown reason. Unfortunately, the Imgburn log has been overwritten, or I would have posted the relevant section here. If it happens again I'll make sure I do so. In general, my experience so far with erasure-formatting with spare sectors enabled and then subsequent data writes have been very stable under Imgburn. Overall, results have been generally excellent, and I'm pleased to see that I was able to use Sony BD-RE-TL completely normally right off the bat, though I am rewriting many of my existing BD-RE-DL discs because they previously were not formatted correctly (via Nero) and I am redoing all of them with spare sectors enabled to increase data integrity. I hope there will be a release of a much needed update of Imgburn in the near future to address all the various known bugs in the current 2.58 release from 2013, especially with higher capacity media now in use.

Since we're on the subject of data integrity, I would be interested in hearing your opinion regarding the pros and cons on setting the VERIFY configuration page's READ ERROR handling parameters. I have already read the Imgburn guide sections relevant to these parameters. So far, in some cases of BD-RE, I have encountered 2 types of verify errors when there are occasional bad spots encountered on the media (particularly with used quality BD-RE media that I am re-using even though they have been very carefully handled): 1. During erasure-formatting with spare sectors enabled, Imgburn reports the data error / media failure in the activity log and presumably marks the area as unuseable and then relocates the bad sector(s). Does subsequent user data writes follow the logged bad sectors during the erasure-formatting or does each data write with a spare sector enabled disc result in a different re-allocation of bad sectors depending on the actual write result? 2. During user data writing (after the disc was erasure-formatted with spare sectors enabled), the write-verify phase (effective recording speed about 0.8X to 1.0X when target speed is set to 2.0X) during data recording detected a write problem, reports it in the log and I assume that the bad sector is relocated to a spare sector. However, after data recording, during Imgburn's verify-only process (read speed 2X), when a verify error is encountered, Imgburn stops and then awaits user input to a prompt whether to retry, continue with ignore or abort the verify process completely. My questions would be: 1. If the SOFTWARE RETRIES configuration parameter was set to other than ZERO (the default value), would Imgburn attempt up to a maximum of the retry value configured, and then continue the retry WITHOUT prompting the user? Or is it necessary to tick the box IGNORE READ ERRORS before the prompt will be suppressed? If the prompt is suppressed, would data errors still be logged in the activity log nevertheless? 2. Does the erasure-formatting retry attempts (when spare sectors are enabled) respect the SOFTWARE RETRIES configuration values before moving to relocate bad sectors with spare sectors? From my observation, it appears to be. But I surmise that increasing the retry count attempts may reduce data integrity in the end because it would mean the process is more tolerant of marginally readable sectors that read successfully with multiple retries but may fail later after extended storage, so it seems to me that higher retry count would lower potential data integrity of the resulting disc written, ultimately.

As far as I know they are simply called slim or slim line drives. Rarely anyone calls drives half height anymore because full height drives haven't been around for decades and everything is assumed to be half height form factor unless otherwise specified.

Thanks for confirming this. Since the drive already verifies piece meal, interleaved with the write process, then when defect management is enabled / spare sectors enabled, would there still be any point to tick the VERIFY box for Imgburn to reverify at 2X speed after the combined write-verify phase at 0.9X is over? It would seem that I might be able to save a couple of hours for a separate after-write verify process.

I've had a chance to write to some BD-REs (DL and TL capacities) on my Pioneer 06 and 09 series BD writers after they have been erase-formatted with spare sectors on. I noticed that when performing erase-formatting with spare sectors option enabled, the Imgburn activity log reports the effective speed is around 0.9X. Interestingly, for BD-RE discs erase-formatted this way, the write speed is also around 0.9X to 1.0X even though the selected write speed is 2X, when used with Verbatim BD-RE-DL and Sony BD-RE-TL discs. I'm wondering whether the effective write speed being around half (0.9X) of the selected write speed (2X) is due to some type of immediate read after write verification procedure when writing, or what factors are at play here that results in this halved write speed? I noticed that during the verification process, the read speed reverts to 2X speed but only the write phase on a BD-RE pre-formatted with spare sectors enabled results in a 0.9X effective write speed. Other than the halved write speed, the written disc works perfectly fine and verifies fully without errors. Perhaps L-UK has some idea what is at play here to shed some light on this halved write speed.

When using IMGBURN in BUILD mode and using the DISC LAYOUT EDITOR, I noticed that when source files are dropped into the disc layout editor, the order of the files are in the order in which the files are dropped. Does this mean that the ACTUAL WRITING ORDER of the files to the optical media will also respect this ordering as displayed in the disc layout editor? I am hoping that the answer to this question is yes, because I am aware that with other ODD software, although a disc layout editor may DISPLAY the files in a particular preferred display order (usually sorted by file name order), in fact when writing occurs, it is actually written to disc in the order in which the files appears in the actual source directory without sorting. However, I am interested in getting a clarification on this point with regards to IMGBURN because that would mean that files listed at the top would be written to beginning tracks near the centre of the disc whereas files listed lower in a given folder will be written to the disc further away from the disc centre. My concern is mainly for BD-RE writing and I am aware that BD-RE is in fact a random access disc format as compared to DVD and CD writable media. So I am not sure whether a single DAO (disc at once) BD write session would mean the data would be written sequentially using disc space from the centre out or it could be written randomly to other areas of the BD-RE logical disc space. From my past observation, I believe the result of a DAO BD write session is the former, i.e. disc space will be written sequentially from centre out.

Thanks, that's great to hear and I look forward to the updated Imgburn release following the current 2.58, whenever that is slated to be. In the disc information you posted for the Panasonic BDXL-RE-TL disc, a few other points I noticed: 1. The DISC DEFINITION STRUCTURE section seems to list only layer 0 and 1 for ISA and OSA only. So would this list be expanded in the newer Imgburn version to include layers beyond layer-1? ISA0 Size: 8,192 clusters - Full: No OSA0 Size: 8,192 clusters - Full: No ISA1 Size: 8,192 clusters - Full: No OSA1 Size: 8,192 clusters - Full: No 2. A rather huge value gap between the Layer-0 LAST PAA value and the Layer-1 FIRST PAA value. This gap is much larger than the value gap between Layer-1 LAST PAA and Layer-2 FIRST PAA. 3. Why is the layer-2 sector count lower than layers 0 and 1? Would that be due to reserved sectors or other system-use sectors allocation? Layer 0 Sectors: 16,292,864 (34.44%) Layer 1 Sectors: 16,292,864 (34.44%) Layer 2 Sectors: 14,720,000 (31.12%)

Yes, but I think that people focus on the SPEED MULTIPLE value too much. BD at 2X or DVD at 4X doesn't sound like much, until you look further into the actual data transfer rate. For example, CD at 52X read/write speed is about 7.8 MB/sec but BD at 2X is about 8.5 MB/sec (due to the much higher native (1X) data rate of the BD format), about similar to DVD at 4X speed which I recall is also around 8 to 9 MB per second or thereabouts. So most users / consumers looking at the multiple value will get a deceiving value of the actual data transfer rate. I'm more concerned with actual data transfer rate, because that tells me how quickly I'm writing data to the media and how long that could take to write and verify, and also how much demand it places on the hard disc head-seek / thrashing while I might be doing other low demand tasks on the computer during ODD writing that could potentially cause a drop in both the ODD software or the ODD's write-buffer level. So I think BD-RE at 2X is tolerable. Not great, but tolerable. I wouldn't mind BD-RE at 4X but even at 2X it is tolerable to use triple layer media during an overnight format with verify, or write with verify job. If I'm not in a rush, I still prefer to write to quality CD-R media at 4X though I have gone as high as 16X with quality CD-R media and have found no real increase in C1 and C2 error rates. CD-RW was basically stuck at 4X write speed until CD-RW-High-Speed media was launched, but CD at 4X took about 15 minutes of write time. Same thing for DVD at 4X, though verification for CD and DVD will usually read much faster than 4X so verification read time is somewhat reduced. As for optical discs being disused, the relatively new M-Disc development ensures that there's no other medium including flash drives, SSD and hard discs could possibly come close to the archival life of the newer BD-M-Discs. The great thing about optical discs is that there are no electronics it it whatsoever, which is the whole point of increasing data safety and archival life. All other alternative storage formats, other than tape cartridge (a more fragile medium) involves on-board electronics with the medium.

Thanks. Very useful information to understand the spare sector areas. So if I understand your calculation correctly, the minimum allocation unit which is one cluster, consumes 64 KiB (i.e. 32 sectors * 2048 bytes per sector) on the optical disc. If so, I can see how a large number of small files (each 64 KiB or smaller) can quickly hog large amounts of disc space. Based on your explanation, it seems that the allocation to each of the inner and outer spare areas is 0.5 GB and therefore the total allocation is 1 GB per layer (and is the available disc space per layer that would have been gained had spare sectors been disabled via Imgburn WRITE options), though as you say, spare area information isn't displayed beyond the second layer (Layer-1) in the DEVICE pane details of Imgburn. But - in fact, these spare area allocations are still occuring during erasure-format for Layer-2 (third layer) and higher, yes? It's safer to have spare sectors available for each individual layer since in some cases an entire layer may be unuseable / inaccessible due to various physical reasons such as manufacturing defects. So I'm glad to hear that spare areas are a per-layer arrangement. There's a lot of data on a multi-layered disc and it gives me a feel of how much protection against relatively minor disc defects the user gets as I start moving into higher BD capacities. As far as I'm aware, BDXL-QL media isn't really currently available standalone and I'm not aware of any current BD-XL drive's media ROM-table support BDXL-QL media. The only way I'm aware that one could obtain BDXL-R-QL discs is to disassemble a Sony archival disc cartridge which internally houses a stack of write-once discs. But even then, I'm not sure how even a premium grade BDXL drive like a Pioneer would handle QL discs. I don't expect BDXL-RE media to be available beyond triple layer. It seems that BD-RE technology will pretty much be limited to 2X speed (which in BD data rates is transferring at a decent speed nearly 9 MB per second) and triple layer capacity.

Yes, I was referring to the odd looking PAA values. But as long as they don't affect the actual disc formatting / defect management and user data writing / verification, I won't worry too much about it. Just thought I would point it out in case it would help you uncover a few more possible bugs if so. About the spare sectors reservation / allocation (if that option is set to make spare sectors so available): 1. Is that part of the original BD-R/RE spec or it is something allocated through some sort of determination by Imgburn? 2. What percentage or capacity of an entire BD-RE disc is allocated to spare sectors and if so, is the logical capacity of the spare sectors indicated anywhere in the disc information that Imgburn displays in the DEVICE pane? 3. Are spare sectors allocated separately for each individual LAYER on a multi-layer disc (DL/TL/QL), i.e. each layer has its own individual spare sector area, or is the spare sector area reserved in a single area that might depend entirely on the integrity of the particular disc layer it resides on? (Or perhaps this is dictated by BD specs) Some removeable media can be checked for remaining available spare sectors / clusters reported either in capacity / clusters / sectors or in percentage of remaining spare area. I'm not sure if BD-R/RE media (formatted by Imgburn) can be checked that way or reported by any ODD software. Interestingly, a fully formatted BDXL-RE-TL disc, when loaded into the Pioneer 09-series ODD, was actually correctly detected in capacity by an older version of Nero which was released well before triple and quad layer BD media specs was announced or designed. Perhaps the ODD is simply reporting logical capacity. But I haven't tried writing to triple layer media with that older version of Nero to see if it does it successfully, and don't see the need to test that at this time.

I've reviewed the DEVICE INFO pane data again and am posting the full details here as it appears there are also other odd looking numbers which may be related to suspected bugs of Imgburn 2.58 handling triple layer media. I've compared it to a BD-RE-DL and I noticed that the DISC INFO section's percentage value is the percentage of the entire disc and not just the layer in question, so presumably it should read around 33.33% for all 3 layers if I understand its intention correctly? Also, under the DISC DEFINITION STRUCTURE section, shouldn't CLUSTORS be spelt CLUSTERS instead? Current Profile: BD-RE Disc Information: Status: Complete State of Last Session: Complete Erasable: Yes Sessions: 1 Sectors: 47,305,728 Size: 96,882,130,944 bytes Time: 10512:25:03 (MM:SS:FF) MID: SONY-ET2-002 Supported Write Speeds: 2x TOC Information: Session 1... (LBA: 0) -> Track 01 (Mode 1, LBA: 0 - 47305727) -> LeadOut (LBA: 47305728) Disc Definition Structure: ISA0 Size: 8,192 clustors - Full: No OSA0 Size: 8,192 clustors - Full: No ISA1 Size: 8,192 clustors - Full: No OSA1 Size: 8,192 clustors - Full: No Certified: No Scanned: No BD Disc Information (L0): Disc ID: SONY-ET2-002 Disc Type: BD-RE Disc Size: 120 mm Disc Class: 1 Disc Version: 3 Number of Layers: 3 Layer Type: Rewritable DVD Layer Present: No CD Layer Present: No Channel Bit Length: 55.87 nm (33 GB Per Layer) BCA Present: Yes Maximum Transfer Rate: Not Specified First PAA of Data Zone: 554,925,568 Last PAA of Data Zone: 48,402,576 BD Disc Information (L1): Disc ID: SONY-ET2-002 Disc Type: BD-RE Disc Size: 120 mm Disc Class: 1 Disc Version: 3 Number of Layers: 3 Layer Type: Rewritable DVD Layer Present: No CD Layer Present: No Channel Bit Length: 55.87 nm (33 GB Per Layer) BCA Present: Yes Maximum Transfer Rate: Not Specified First PAA of Data Zone: 2,113,928,704 Last PAA of Data Zone: 48,402,576 BD Disc Information (L2): Disc ID: SONY-ET2-002 Disc Type: BD-RE Disc Size: 120 mm Disc Class: 1 Disc Version: 3 Number of Layers: 3 Layer Type: Rewritable DVD Layer Present: No CD Layer Present: No Channel Bit Length: 55.87 nm (33 GB Per Layer) BCA Present: Yes Maximum Transfer Rate: Not Specified First PAA of Data Zone: 2,702,409,216 Last PAA of Data Zone: 48,391,268 Layer Information: Layer 0 Sectors: 242,783,376 (513.2%) Layer 1 Sectors: 655,660,176 (1386%) Layer 2 Sectors: 3,443,829,472 (7280%) Format Capacities: DT: 0x02 - NB: 47305728 (0x02D1D400) - TDP: 49152 FT: 0x00 - NB: 47305728 (0x02D1D400) - TDP: 49152 FT: 0x30 - NB: 47305728 (0x02D1D400) - TDP: 49152 FT: 0x30 - NB: 46781440 (0x02C9D400) - TDP: 65536 FT: 0x30 - NB: 48854016 (0x02E97400) - TDP: 768 FT: 0x31 - NB: 48878592 (0x02E9D400) - TDP: 2048 Performance (Write Speed): Descriptor 1... -> B0: 0x00, B1: 0x00, B2: 0x00, B3: 0x00 -> EL: 47305727 (0x02D1D3FF) -> RS: 8,990 KB/s (2x) - WS: 8,990 KB/s (2x)

Regarding: 1. OK, so previously one format error message was failure to perform full certification, and the other format error message was failure to perform quick certification. Got it. 2. Interesting to know. Hopefully it's not an "overflow" type of bug that caused meaningless numbers like this. I have no idea what happens within Imgburn, just visualizing what could be going on. Please keep us informed if you uncover the cause. So are you saying that the percentage value displayed for each layer should be say, 100% for a defect free layer (i.e. all clusters available) and less than 100% for a layer that has defects (provided that spare sectors are made available during format)? Sony BD-RE-TL media is quite cheap now, though the only available inventory are all designated as domestic Japanese inventory, though Verbatim does have BD-XL-R-TL write once media now sold globally. I'll be continuing the Sony BD-RE-TL media formatting as I have a stack of these virgin discs to go through and due to the nearly 7 hours format / verify time required, I will usually try start formatting very late night and by early morning, the process will be completed for one disc. 3. Thanks for the acronym explanations. I'll look them up further.

I've used a number of TSSTCorp ODDs (Toshiba-Samsung STorage Corp., i.e. very common branded Samsung ODDs) before, though the half-height ones and possibly some of their slim line ODDs. In general they are okay, but I wouldn't call them top notch in burn quality. But one time I did use a new TSST half height ODD drive to write out to a CD-R (JVC/TY quality media) and found that however it wrote CD-Rs for CD-DA red book format, the resulting discs were not reliably playable / readable on standard hi-fi audio CD players that only read CD-DA pressings or CD-Rs only (excluding CD-RW). After returning the TSST drives and switching to Sony-Optiarc, all the CD-DA read problems on CD-Rs were resolved and I was able to produce CD-R-DA discs that would read perfectly well on pre-CD-RW compatible CD-DA standalone players. TSST exited the ODD market some time ago, as some may know.

I finally completed a first-time formatting of Sony BD-XL-RE-TL 100 GB discs (MID: SONY-ET2-002) successfully and it went without a hitch on the Pioneer 09-series ODD the first time. I actually did two passes of erasure formatting because on the first pass I forgot to enable spare sectors area even though I already disabled the certification write-option. With spare sectors disabled, Imgburn erase-formatted at 2X speed and completed the disc in approximately 3 hours and 9 minutes. During the second pass to reformat the same disc with spare sectors made available, the procedure was reported in the log as having an average speed of 0.9X (with this particular ODD anyway) which required approximately 6 hours and 44 minutes to complete, actually quite a bit shorter than the 10 hours I had expected as I had read another user on the forum here found the defect managed formatting for BD-XL-RE-TL was proceeding at 0.6X speed instead. The effective available space after the formatting is about 90.23 GB for a 100 GB disc. I was wondering if L-UK or anyone else in the know could enlighten me on a few technical points: -------------------------- 1. With certification mode disabled in write-options, I only got one format-error message this time (instead of the two messages I used to get): FormatDisc(FT: 0x30, FST: 0x03) Not Supported! I'm not sure which function this error refers to that indicates the Pioneer drive doesn't support. -------------------------- 2. In the device details, it says that: Layer Information: Layer 0 Sectors: 242,783,376 (513.2%) Layer 1 Sectors: 655,660,176 (1386%) Layer 2 Sectors: 3,443,829,472 (7280%) I wanted to learn and understand what this sector count reported for each layer meant. I thought on a BD-RE-TL or BD-R-TL disc that each layer was 33 GB capacity so I'm unsure why layers 0 to 2 has such a different sector count from each other, and what the percentage value included means, and whether these figures hint of anything regarding quality / defects as discovered by the erasure-formatting process with spare sectors made available. -------------------------- 3. In the BD disc information listed for each layer, there are a few parameters: BCA Present: Yes First PAA of Data Zone: 2,702,409,216 Last PAA of Data Zone: 48,391,268 I was interested to know what BCA and PAA stood for. If you think this would be explained better in any of the BDA's BD general white paper (which is currently on its 5th edition released in 2018.01), I would be happy to read up on it there if you have any pointers or referrals to any sections in the white paper. -------------------------- I would be great to get a better grasp on these details, it helps me to feel more conversant with Imgburn and its advanced functions / features and a better usage experience to be more informed. Thanks.

Thanks for the additional clarifications. It gives me a pretty good sense / grasp of how to use Imgburn with those concerns. I have the same DISC DEFINITION STRUCTURE values after erasure-formatting on both the Pioneer 06 and 09 series BD writers as you mentioned. As for Pioneer drives, they do have the industrial grade BDR-PR1M series BD-XL writers released a few years back, which they want to charge over US$300 for the drives. They were specifically designed for archival and error / defect management and does come with proprietary Pioneer disc defect management software. The C suffix drive appears to be for the purpose of defect management whereas the A suffix drive is mainly for writing. Both drives primarily designed for Mitsubishi/MKM archival grade 200 year life BD-R media. Though, if M-Disc has an archival life approaching 1000 years, I don't see the point. If you get your hands on these Pioneer ODDs, it would be interesting to know how you find the defect manangement fairs.

Thanks for the additional information on the Imgburn formatting error messages. So let me recap and see if I understand this correctly: 1. Originally you said that the options PREFER FORMAT WITH FULL CERTIFICATION need to be ticked and PREFER FORMAT WITHOUT SPARE AREAS to be unticked (i.e. spare area becomes available). With that combination, defect management can be realized during the disc's virgin state erase-formatting. However, since in this case the Pioneer drives show that certification-formatting is not supported, is there still any point ticking the option for PREFER FORMAT WITH FULL CERTIFICATION, even though all that does would seem to just generate a format error message on an ODD that doesn't support that type of formatting? Or is is still necessary to to tick the certification box so that defect mapping would be performed during erasure-formatting? What is the different between certified and non-certified? It would seem that even if the Pioneer drives are incapable of certification, the user could still get defect mapping out of Imgburn, so I'm unclear about the difference between drives that can and cannot perform disc certification during formatting under Imgburn. 2. I understand that defect mapping is possible during erasure-formatting when the correct options are set up. But what about during subsequent data-writes and verification? I know that during write verification, Imgburn will display error messages of areas that failed verification, but does the verification process also RELOCATE data from bad spots to spare areas during WRITE-VERIFICATION? In other words, does DEFECT GROWTH on the disc becomes detectable by the verification process, or does defect mapping occur only during erasure-formatting but not in subsequent write and verify operations? 3. Regarding full pre-erasure of a BD-RE disc that already has data and is to be overwritten, I think it would probably be a good practice if I previously had other data on the disc and wanted to ensure that all existing data is wiped out before rewriting a new DAO session on it, to ensure that no previously written data could be accessible. I think this would be the only reason to perform a full pre-erasure in preparation for BD-RE overwrite (as well as other rewritable media including DVD / CD). I was unsure over the many years of using rewritable media whether a direct overwrite would produce a less clean readable signal off the disc as compared to a pre-erasure disc first. In some cases in the past I've had odd cases where DVD+RW discs produced a better error rate quality when pre-erased for overwritting, as opposed to being directly overwritten in the same pass. So I don't mind continuing that practice but I can imagine that it depends on the media type and its quality as well as the drive used.

Going back to the original discussion of this thread, I was wondering, is there a facility within Imgburn where the user could manually specify how many LBAs logical data blocks to be erase-formatted and perhaps certify? If this is possible, I'd like to learn how to do it. For example, if I had a BD-RE dual layer disc and only the first layer (Layer zero) is useable, I was wondering if it would be possible to manually specify the LBA range for erasure-formatting. I noticed that the program itself knows how many LBAs there are in each layer and this information is specified in the disc information displayed in Imgburn.

With JVC/TY gone, have you had any experience with Verbatim / Mitsubishi's archival grade gold CD-R with hard coating (which seems to be something applied from BD hard coating)? Any idea what the MID is on those CD-R discs as well as Verbatim's CD-RW discs?

I realize this thread is drifting off topic but being new to the forum it seems that all the other sections are about Imgburn other than the specific ODD and media threads in separate sections. But in any case, Taiyo Yuden had a joint venture with JVC / Victor Advanced Media for a number of years and they produced superb CD media which I have used, but even that operation has shut down since 2015. I noticed that Vinpower is selling PlexDisc CD/DVD/BD media off the Plextor affiliated branding, but I can't help but wonder who the real OEM is and I haven't looked up any MID info on it yet. Speaking of Vinpower, I noticed they resurrected the Sony-Optiarc AD-5280S DVD-writer as the new Optiarc AD-5290S with the same sub-versions as before. This is probably the only DVD-writer I would go with these days, although I have a sinking feeling that the new AD-5290S is really a Lite-On drive inside as it has that telltale distinct looking "flower-petal-shaped" top cover over the disc clamp that seems to be telltale Philips/Lite-On Taiwan OEM. There were a couple of North American Pioneer DVD writers near the end of their DVD writer line that was OEMed by Lite-On and it was quite junky and I had to return them, and later stocked up on a couple of spare Optiarc AD-5280S ODDs which were very useful for error rates monitoring such as with Opti-Drive Control and other utilities.

I think the trick is to stay ahead of the media technology so that the media format is new enough it has to be made by the original brand's manufacturer in Japan in order to avoid other OEMs. As for Pioneer, it's possible that the 09-series BD writers maybe its last good non-UHD writers. The 09-series has been officially discontinued and the new UHD-read compatible 11-series is the current product. Furthermore, the acquisition of Pioneer by Onkyo (which itself was acquired by Gibson a number of years back) may have some implications for Pioneer products in the future, though I believe Onkyo had only acquired the A/V divisions of Pioneer as a subsidiary and Pioneer's computer ODD division may carry on unaffected for the meantime.

Thanks. Well it's good that you agree that Pioneer is pretty much the top BD-writer brand to use. I would certainly concur. One point though, I noticed you called them "full" height drives, but in fact they are actually HALF height. All drives are half height today because they are half the height of the original full height 180 KB / 360KB floppy drives and hard discs in the old days. In the last post I meant to say the cheap Verbatim BD-RE-DL discs with slim line jewel cases (which you mentioned were OEMed by CMC) were the first media type I encountered errors on, but I've corrected that in that post now. I originally started with the Japan-made Verbatim BD-RE stock about 8 years ago and the error rates on those discs seem to be holding up well after all this time. I just checked the Sony BD-RE-TL packaging for the discs I bought previously, they are all Japan-made for sure as it is stated on the packaging in Japanese.

It really depends on the geographical region of which the media inventory is sold. For example, Sony branded BD-R media is OEMed by Panasonic / Matsushita in Japan for Sony BD-R 4X disc inventory sold within Japan. However, outside of Japan, the same branded Sony media may well be made by another OEM such as Ritek or CMC, or in Sony's own Taiwan media plants. Due to all these variations in media sourcing that keeps changing even from batch to batch, I think M-Disc BD-Rs would be the safest. Verbatim and Milleniata are both possible choices for M-Disc BD-Rs. For a virgin state Sony BD-RE-TL (Japan-made) inserted into a Pioneer 09-series BD writer with the latest version 1.50 firmware dated 2018.01 and only just released in early March 2018, I get this disc info from Imgburn: ************************************** Disc Information: Status: Empty State of Last Session: Empty Erasable: Yes MID: SONY-ET2-002 Supported Write Speeds: 2x BD Disc Information (L0): Disc ID: SONY-ET2-002 Disc Type: BD-RE Disc Size: 120 mm Disc Class: 1 Disc Version: 3 Number of Layers: 3 Layer Type: Rewritable DVD Layer Present: No CD Layer Present: No Channel Bit Length: 55.87 nm (33 GB Per Layer) BCA Present: Yes Maximum Transfer Rate: Not Specified First PAA of Data Zone: 554,925,568 Last PAA of Data Zone: 48,402,576 ************************************** This is an earlier production batch of Sony BD-RE-TL discs (Japan-made) when the product was initially released. I will have an opportunity to use more recent production batches of the same media type (also Japan-made) a little later this year as I use up the earlier batch. I'll be very interested to see how much defect there is on a virgin TL disc when defect managed under Imgburn. Going forward I would prefer to use Imgburn for TL discs if possible. According to Pioneer 09-series BD writer firmware history, Sony BD-RE-TL was added to media support back in early 2014 and M-Disc BD-R-SL was added in late 2014. Presumably, media write quality refinements were made in firmware in the last several years of firmware updates. I'm unsure whether I should enable OPC option in the WRITE options of Imgburn for BD-RE / BD-R writing though, and whether or not this option is applicable to BD writing in Imgburn and what impact it could have on data integrity in long term archival. The default state for this option is disabled in Imgburn. I also noticed an older thread you were in regarding the CMC OEMed Verbatim BD-RE-DL discs: http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?/topic/23861-movies-always-stuck-randomly-on-50gb-bd-re-dl/ Actually that is the disc type that I encountered my first Verbatim BD-RE error on. All my other Verbatim BD-RE discs are the full size jewel case Japan made inventory. There were cheap however, and it seems, that is the reason why. Do you have the URL of the other Sony TL thread you mentioned?

I've never used any Verbatim BD-RE single layer discs. I also don't usually use write-once medium because RW/RE discs allows me to rewrite the contents as more data is added, even though the process requires a complete erasure / rewrite as a DAO session. It may well be that the SL discs are made by another OEM like CMC which I would likely want to avoid. I know that I lot of BD-R-SL discs are not of great quality. If I use BD-R I would prefer to use M-Disc BD-Rs. When I started with BD-RE discs I started with the Verbatim dual layer 50 GB discs, which were all in standard full sized jewel cases and were all made in Japan by Mitsubishi. I've been using only these BD-RE-DL discs exclusively up until recently but have also used some packaged in slimline jewel cases (also made in Japan) primarily for BD video recorders use in Japan. I have not encountered a single bad disc with the Verbatim full jewel case (made in Japan) media at all and the only single Verbatim disc I had that was bad is a slim line jewel case packaged one. Note that a few years ago, Mitsubishi did release an archival grade of BD-Rs rated for archival life of about 50 years. I have not tried them. However, going forward I will be using more Sony BD-RE-TL discs due to having outgrown the capacity of BD-RE-DL discs (which stores 46 GB after formatting). I'm apprehensive about how good the Sony BD-RE-TL discs are, considering my past experience with their DVD+RW discs (though those were OEMed by Ritek, a completely different source). I don't think there are any BD-RE-TL discs made outside of Japan at this time but that situation may have changed since I last checked. I've found Panasonic BD-RE-TL discs to be too expensive when they were first released though they are actually made in Japan. Most major BD media brands are sourcing production from China plants today, including inventory that is sold in Japan. However, media quality produced in China plants sold by major BD brands appears to be gradually improving recently from error rates tests I've seen. Sony BD-RE-TL seems to be the most reasonably priced TL media at this time for me. I re-ran an Imgburn full erasure procedure last night on the one Verbatim BD-RE disc which was known to have defects but was not ever formatted by Imgburn in fully certified mode. The full erasure process under full certification and defect managed mode is far slower (as mentioned in the older thread URL I posted - running at about 0.6X speed instead of 2X speed erasure for no defect management. However, I think only the top layer of that defective disc (Layer 0) is useable. The second layer (Layer 1) is defective. Eventually, the Imgburn log reported lots of errors and ran out of spare sectors and the full erasure could not be completed. I'll probably just use that half disc BD-RE for storing temporary or non-critical data. So based on this experience I think a defect managed full erasure pre-format to prepare a BD-RE-TL could require an entire overnight run to complete if the defect mapping process runs at 0.6X speed. Because a BD-RE-DL of 50 GB capacity even with zero defects takes 90 minutes to run through at 2X without defect mapping (straight formatting / erasure). This means with a BD-RE-TL doubling the capacity to 100 GB would take double that time which is 180 minutes / 3 hours at 2X speed, so 1X speed would be 360 minutes / 6 hours and 0.6X speed in defect management formatting mode would take 600 minutes or 10 hours to complete formatting, and that even assuming the BD-RE-TL has no or very few defects to remap during erasure-formatting. I may rewrite some previously written Verbatim BD-RE-DL discs and reformat them with Imgburn under defect management mode. This may reveal more bad sectors / defective discs in BD-RE discs that are already in use, or I may migrate the some of the existing data to Sony BD-RE-TL altogether if too many defects are found on the Verbatim BD-RE discs currently in use.

Thanks for the additional clarification. I did re-check the disc details for the Verbatim BD-RE (which was fully erased by Nero Burning-Rom earlier), and the particulars for it are: Disc Definition Structure: Certified: No Scanned: No I'm assuming CERTIFIED = NO means that the disc wasn't defect mapped during formatting and is thus not formatted with full certification. I'm not sure what SCAN = NO means however, since the Imgburn user guide has no information on it (or I need to look in a different area of the user guide for explanation). Oddly, I have used well over 50 Verbatim BD-RE discs so far under Nero and I've not yet had an after-write verification errors. So my experience has been very positive so far for this media type (MID is VERBAT-IM1-000). On this particular BD-RE-DL disc I used on Imgburn, I did not have a pre-write formatting / full erasure procedure report any errors but only encountered errors during after-write verification. I'm guessing that Imgburn gave me no warning of formatting errors (if it even does so in the first place during that procedure, perhaps in the log) because although I had enabled PREFER FORMAT WITH FULL CERTIFICATION, I also enabled PREFER FORMAT WITHOUT SPARE AREAS and thus spare sectors were unavailable to map out bad sectors and thus the disc was uncertified - I am surmising. I will retry the entire disc write with formatting with FULL CERTIFICATION option enabled but FORMAT WITHOUT SPARE AREAS disabled in order to make available spare sectors. This would seem to allow the user data written after formatting and defect mapping to verify without errors. It is better to lose some available disc space and not have to junk an entire 50 GB disc since it is likely that most of the disc capacity will still be useable. If this isn't the right approach, please advise. * With regards to how Nero Burning-ROM deals with virgin disc formatting, what I have observed with both DVD+RW and BD-RE-DL media I have used under Nero before, is that it does not appear to fully format the whole disc surface from virgin state. Instead, the ODD software only writes up to the end of the user data. This is clearly noticeable because on these types of media, there is a visually noticeable difference in reflectivity on the media surface between truly virgin areas versus written areas, and it is possible to clearly see the end boundary of where the user data writing ends when a disc-at-once session is written to such RW/RE media. The only time I believe Nero writes to all disc sectors is during full erasure, which is what I usually do before rewritting any RW/RE media. After a Nero full erasure pass, the visible data boundary is no longer noticeable since all sectors have been written to. From what I could tell, Nero only quick formats the TOC / directory area of virgin discs and then writes on the fly to the end of user data, producing the visible data-end boundary on disc that's easily discerniable during examination of the recording surface under a bright light. As a result, a Nero disc-at-once session results in a variable session size which is that of the total disc space of the written user data. This is what I observed with Nero written discs (DVD/BD) in the past. * Regarding a BD-RE that has been formatted in Imgburn with full certification and is defect mapped (with spare areas made available), if such a certified disc has been FULLY RE-ERASED by another ODD writing software such as Nero or even in Imgburn, would that mean that the certified and defect mapped format be completely lost and thus a reformatting under Imgburn with certification mode enabled amd spare areas available for defect re-mapping would be required? * How can a user force Imgburn to perform a re-certfication format with defect mapping if the software will fully format the disc only if it detects that it has not been previously been so formatted? Is this done through a full erasure procedure which may essentially include formatting? * I've noticed that even with a virgin BD-RE-DL disc, when the full erasure formatting begins, there are 2 error messages from Imgburn that occurs for both my Pioneer BD writers (06 and 09 series): FormatDisc(FT: 0x30, FST: 0x02) Not Supported! FormatDisc(FT: 0x30, FST: 0x03) Not Supported! I'm not sure if these warnings may mean that I won't be able to produce a defect managed BD-RE formatted disc under Imgburn. Though I did notice an older forum thread touching on a similar concern, but I'm still unsure if that means once a virgin BD-RE has been formatted without spare sectors area available that this status cannot be altered through a second forced reformat with different option parameters in Imgburn: http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?/topic/21954-formatting-blu-ray-bd-re-with-formatdisc-not-supported-notifications/

Thanks for the clarification. This is still a learning process for me to become more confident with using Imgburn's extensive and flexible settings. Ultimately, if possible I would prefer to use Imgburn for BD-RE-TL media writing. Based on what you described, and having further reviewed the Imgburn user guide on the WRITE settings at this URL: http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?/topic/6232-the-imgburn-settings/&do=findComment&comment=65055 I have a few other questions regarding BD-RE-SL/DL/TL media use with Imgburn: 1. I would be happy to use the correctly formatted BD-RE media by keeping the box PREFER PROPERLY FORMATTED DISCS ticked, which I assume is the option you described earlier to enforce full formatting of virgin discs. However, according to the user guide explanation on PREFER PROPERLY FORMATTED DISCS option, it says that there is a [FORMATTED: YES/NO] status displayed in right side info panel. But after I inserted a Nero full erased Verbatim BD-RE disc into the BD writer and the ODD became ready, the disc details displayed by Imgburn did not include the parameter FORMATTED: YES/NO. Am I missing something here? 2. If a properly formatted virgin BD-RE should be a single session of a size of the full capacity of the entire disc, does that mean that when actual data written to the disc is less than the full capacity of the disc, that the single session size would STILL show as a session size of the full capacity of the disc, i.e. the same single session size after a full erasure? 3. Regarding the option PREFER FORMAT WITH FULL CERTIFICATION, I had previously used Imgburn with that option in its default state, which is ENABLED. However, with one new virgin Verbatim BD-RE I wrote to, which Imgburn performed full erasure/formatting prior to writing to it, there was a region on the disc about half way through the full disc capacity where multiple write-verification errors occured. If I understand this option properly, would Imgburn not have already mapped out bad spots during the pre-write formatting procedure and therefore, there should not have been write-verify errors? However, I would mention that I also had PREFER FORMAT WITHOUT SPARE AREAS in its default state ENABLED and therefore, I'm wondering if this option should have been disabled instead when PREFER FORMAT WITH FULL CERTIFICATION is enabled, so that there are spare sectors available for bad sector remapping during formatting and thus there would not have been subsequent write-verify errors arising? The relationship between these two write options settings and its correct use is unclear to me. I would of course place write-verify error free as a higher priority over gaining extra space by using the spare sector area on the disc. Thanks for your help.