UDF BDR created. Now Windows won't read it back. Bad batch of discs, or an error on my part?

[Bassthang]

It's been a while, but I've had a break in the "sadmin" and other urgent tasks and I so had a chance to revisit the problem.
I have some good news!

Firstly, thanks go out to dbminter for finding the link to the firmware update for my Samsung burner. I've applied it, and it's made all the difference! I was sceptical at first, but what persuaded me to try it was reading an article about the original Verbatim discs being HTL and the new ones apparently being LTH. Some drives weren't able to write LTH discs without an update. It looks like my Samsung was one of those. Since doing that, I've had almost 100% success with the same discs. I say "almost" because I lost two discs due to other, unconnected hardware problems (and me being too tired to check things properly).

I'm so glad that I don't have to cough up more money to get a new burner, although I might get the internal Pioneer drive later on as an alternative, when I have funds available.

Secondly, I'm trying a new brand of disc: Mediarange. I can't remember exactly, but I think I read that these were HTL discs. The second burn with these discs is ongoing as I write this. So far, so good. . .

Thirdly, I'd like to say how much better ImgBurn is than some of the alternatives! Yes, it can be a bit fiddly sometimes, but with ImgBurn I can see what's going to happen before I commit to a burn and adjust the process. I gave up with Nero years ago when they dumbed it down and took away most of the controls that I was used to. Ditto Roxio.
This was all brought into sharp relief when I tried burning a BDR on a Mac this week. This was because my band's album projects were created on a Mac and backed-up to an Apple-formatted HDD. I use Windows, but I had been given a Mac tower to run Pro Tools on, so it made sense to copy the backed-up projects to this machine. (We'd tried backing up to exfat discs before - all the band members use Windows PCs - but gave up when three backup HDDs failed completely at about the same time. I have a suspicion that HDDs don't like being written to by Macs when formatted as exfat. And to reinforce this, I had a HDD fail this week when I formatted it as exfat and tried to burn a disc on my Windows laptop, using this HDD as source. The HDD failed during the burn.) 
Apple fans always tell me how great the Apple way of doing things is. "It just works" is something I hear a lot. But trying to burn a disc using MacOS is a frustrating, infuriating, messy and often  unsuccessful process. Yes, it's nice to just drag and drop items, but sometimes the whole folder gets copied to the burn window (as it should), sometimes only a single file. I'm sure there are some hotkeys to better control this behaviour, but I haven't found them yet, so it takes several attempts to drag a few folders over. In the end I decided to copy all the project files onto an exfat HDD, plug that into my Windows laptop, copy them onto my laptop's HDD and then use ImgBurn to do the work.
Give me ImgBurn every time!!!!
(To be fair, a lot of this is probably just because I'm unfamiliar with the Mac. I have a book called "Switching to the Mac" which is written specially for Windows users to acclimatise themselves to the strange world of Apple. I haven't found the time to work through it yet, but soon. . .)

[dbminter]

You should avoid the LTH discs whenever possible.  They are an inferior technology.  They used co-opted DVD production lines.  LTH uses organic dyes like DVD's do so they won't last as long as HTL BD-R, which use metal oxides.  LTH also have higher incompatibility rates with hardware.

[Bassthang]

That's why I bought the Verbatims, because the first batch I bought were HTL (as far as I know). I started to think that these newer ones from CMC were LTH though. It's so hard to tell. I had read somewhere that any discs that are LTH have to say so on the packaging, and that if it doesn't say one or the other it still means it's HTL.
There's a question about identifying whether a disc is HTL or LTH on StackExchange and someone said that it's easy to check with ImgBurn - just scroll down the device list with a disc inserted and it's right there. So I've checked my newer Verbatims (those that caused the problems) and they are coming up as HTL. So are the new MediaRange discs. Phew!

[dbminter]

Yeah, it makes sense that the CMC LTH discs would be problematic.  CMC makes the worst optical discs out there when it comes to organic dye media like DVD and LTH BD-R.  CMC also, ironically, owns Verbatim.  And Verbatim is not above using CMC trash media to maximize profits.  But, Verbatim also farms out to Mitsubishi which makes the best DVD's out there and they make their own HTL BD-R which are high quality.

 

I don't know for sure, but I think MediaRange discs when it comes to DVD's have been cheap stuff that doesn't last long.

[Bassthang]

I've just re-read the earlier posts in this thread to try and get my head round it all.
So it looks like there are NO "good" discs that are being sold here. If I lived in the USA I could get the proper Verbatim ones, but I'm stuck here on Brexit Island where Verbatim won't even honour their guarantee. Apparently even the "M-disc" BDRs are not true M-disc technology but just a branding exercise to extract more money from the punters. What a ridiculous situation! I was very pleased with BDR as an archive solution, but the manufacturers have scuppered the medium's prospects.
So far, the Mediarange discs have all worked well.

[dbminter]

Since I live in the US, I can't directly speak on the situation as it pertains to England.  I'm just going by what I've seen posted from other users here who are in Europe.