Correctable uncorrectable L-EC read errors?

[Outlier]

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...

[Outlier]

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.

[dbminter]

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.

[Outlier]

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

[Outlier]

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?

[dbminter]

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.

 

Personal experience has lead me to believe the NS60 is the best of the worst.  It has the fewest problems of the 3 major manufacturers.  The LG's limitations are it claims to write 16x to 16x BD-R but only writes at 12x.  Other write rates are also slightly less than the other manufacturers.  If there is any recovery of buffers during a write, BD-R maxes out at only 6x and DVD-R at only 8x.  Lastly, the NS60 does not properly write to the latest model Ritek 8x DVD+RW.  It does to the earlier model Ricoh, but not the latest Ritek ones from Imation.

 

There are two other major BD manufacturers out there.  As you know, Pioneer is one.  Pioneer unfortunately is a non-starter because it's become junk over the last few years.  BD-RE only ever verifies at 2x max even though 2x BD-RE is capable of much faster read speeds.  Lastly, Pioneer firmware has, for years, been unable to write properly to the old model Ritek 8x DVD+RW.  They always fail Verifies.

 

The other major manufacturer is ASUS, but they're a non-starter, too.  When their model was first released, the firmware destroyed DVD+RW and BD-RE!  Subsequent firmware updates stopped that, but the drive still doesn't properly write to new Imation Ritek 8x DVD+RW.  The deal killer is DVD+R DL.  They always fail Verify at the layer change, meaning the firmware doesn't properly write Verbatim MKM high quality DVD+R DL.

 

I've never written any TL BD media so I can't say how well the NS60 handles those.  I've burned a few M-Disc, but only SL's.  And the only BD DL media I've ever burned is BD-RE DL.

 

You may be tempted to get the WH16NS40 because it's cheaper if you don't need UHD.  Don't.  The NS40 will 9 times out of 10 fail to properly write to BD DL media.

[Outlier]

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]

Verbatim probably actually doesn't make their own optical drives.  Half of their discs they don't make themselves; they're farmed out to CMC Magnetics.  You should avoid slim model drives whenever possible.  They're generally junk.  I do have a slim model Verbatim DVD drive for those rare cases when my NS60 won't read a disc.  LG drives can be picky readers.  Like maybe 1 disc in 100 can't be read by them.  The only 2 burn tests I gave it had 50/50 results.  DVD-R burned fine, but DVD+RW didn't.

[dbminter]

As for the reliability of the NS60, it's really up to the discs you're putting in.  For instance, just now, on the NS60 I swapped in, I got a failure on Verify right at the start of a BD-R burn.  However, the next write of the same image to the same Verbatim BD-R succeeded so that most likely a fluke.  1 bad disc in a stack of 50.  So, it's generally not the reliability of the drive that fails, it's the discs.  However, some drives do have bad firmware like Pioneer and ASUS.

 

Of course, this could be an indication the BD laser is going bad in this NS60, too.  I've no idea how long this NS60 was sitting there on the shelf or how long I'd used it before putting it on the shelf.

[Outlier]

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. 

[dbminter]

I actually had 3 NS60's sitting around.  One gets used and the other 2 were older units.  I always have a backup for my tech on hand when it dies.  And it is a question of when, not if.  The oldest one died and I swapped in the oldest of the other 2, but it also died in under a week.  It's time was close to dying, too.  The one I swapped in just recently was the newest one I had.  Next month, I plan on getting another NS60 to have on hand to swap in when this one eventually gives up the ghost.

 

There's no set in stone answer on when a laser will die.  I've had drives that lasted 2 years and I've had drives that lasted 2 months before they gave up the ghost.  But, there are certain factors that help age a laser.  Particularly, how long it's been used.  In other words, how many discs it's burned. 

 

The good news about LG is they have a very good replacement policy.  They will replace a drive if it dies before a year.  If it's out of warranty, they charge $40 for a replacement, which is cheaper than the drive new.  However, though I've had to get several replacements from LG over the years that were out of warranty, they have never charged me the $40 replacement fee for any drive I've returned.

[Outlier]

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?

[dbminter]

Barring that one hiccup I had earlier which succeeded on the next disc I attempted to burn, I've had no issues since that one recently.  Which means, most likely, the BD-R that did fail was just a bad one in the batch.

 

While an MID can say anything in its string, including M-Disc, I doubt very few M-Disc manufacturers will do that.  So, no there most likely won't be anything anywhere in the MID that says M-Disc.  As far as I know, there's no way to tell if a disc is an M-Disc after you've burned it.  The obvious way to tell before burning is try burning it on a non M-Disc drive.  However, you'd probably end up wasting a disc that way, so it's not practical.

[Outlier]

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.

[dbminter]

By wasting a disc, I was thinking of putting in a BD-R that wasn't an M-Disc.  You might end up wasting a BD-R that isn't an M-Disc.

 

The big question is exactly what kind of response would you get in a non M-Disc burner if you inserted an M-Disc BD.  Would you get incompatible media?  Or just an infinite loop attempting to load the disc?  Or, worst case scenario, you attempt to write an M-Disc in a non M-Disc burner and the drive attempts it, but can't, but still wrote just enough to make the disc unusable in an M-Disc burner.

[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.

[dbminter]

Go by Pioneer's sites and check out their burners.  They usually offer multiple kinds of their models with fewer features for people who want to save on price.  Although you may be wary of their hardware after your experience.