AlbertEinstein Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 I've recently mastered a freshly burned BD-R 25GB disc. Sometimes it seems to behave properly for the Windows OS and sometimes not. This randomness is the reliability of an optical media disc, literally, from day to day is what puzzles me most about optical media. Is it that flakey? What metrics, if any, can be used to check the quality of a burned disc, if that's even possible. Thanks for reading! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbminter Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 Well, that question doesn't really have a straight forward answer. It depends on what kind of BD-R you burned. If it's a data BD-R, I would guess the best metrics would be to try and perform a Read operation on it. If the Read operation completes, then the disc is probably okay. You could also check the Graphs ImgBurn produced for the PIE and PIO results, but I know next to nothing about those as I don't bother with that data. If it's a BD Video, a Read test is another good metric, but you won't really know without performing a scan test in a BD player. You will need to perform a forward scan in the player at a speed that is not too slow but also not too fast so that any bad data would be skipped over. And that isn't a standardized value as BD players each have different levels of forward scan speeds. Define "flakey" randomness of reliability. Are you getting read errors in Windows? Slow downs in read and then faster reads? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlbertEinstein Posted January 27 Author Share Posted January 27 (edited) Okay, firstly, I burned the BD-R as a data disc. Yes, it contains some video clips in mostly .mp4 video container formats. But I wouldn't want to view all the videos to verify the quality of the burn. It contains all manner of different files besides video including images, text files, etc. So, just think of it as a data disc. So, this flakiness I speak of means exactly that. Sometimes, I'll try to read the BD-R disc and Windows spins....*quitely* a few times to get synchronized to whatever the hell it's syncing up with and then it shows me the root folder on my optical media in the 'File Explorer" or a good old fashioned PowerShell prompt (I use both). As I stated, sometimes this process is very quick, sometimes I hear a lot of bumping'n'grinding before I get the display of a root folder. And sometimes I have to end up killing the process because it's just not happening. Much like some blind dates in real life might go down...it's *just not happening*. So you kill the process. And yes, this is on the same disc at different times. Edited January 27 by AlbertEinstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbminter Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 I have tended to notice varying degrees of response times for BD-R's. For instance, writing the LeadIn for a BD-R in ImgBurn can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes and 30 seconds. There appears to be no rhyme or reason. Next time you think you need to kill the process, wait 5 minutes first just to be sure. 5 minutes is more than enough time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlbertEinstein Posted January 27 Author Share Posted January 27 (edited) 8 minutes ago, dbminter said: I have tended to notice varying degrees of response times for BD-R's. For instance, writing the LeadIn for a BD-R in ImgBurn can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes and 30 seconds. There appears to be no rhyme or reason. Next time you think you need to kill the process, wait 5 minutes first just to be sure. 5 minutes is more than enough time. Oh, I have believe me. I'm a patient person who likes to learn and understand things. But seriously, waiting 5 minutes for the bump'n'grind to stop just to get a damn root folder up on the screen tells me something isn't right. That's what I hate about optical media. When people laugh at me for still using it today I always have the reliability argument to fall back on. And I still stand by that argument. I think BD-R can last up to 20 years, let alone M-Disc lasting up to a 100 years. But this this painful bumping'n'grinding is what I hate about optical media. If that could be done away with somehow I would be more proud to use this older technology without question. And btw, I think I have said this in times past, but it seems like ImgBurn can get a read on discs faster than Windows, at least sometimes. And I think that has to do with the way the software attempts to read the volume and file descriptors on the disc. So, there's that factor also in all of this craziness. Edited January 27 by AlbertEinstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbminter Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 A sector by sector read approach, as ImgBurn would do, would be faster than the somewhat brute force method that File Explorer does. What BD drive are you using, BTW? The locked up responses sound more like hardware inconsistencies, which would be down to the drive. For instance, it rarely takes more than 10 seconds for a folder's contents on a BD-R to be recognized on my system in File Explorer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlbertEinstein Posted January 27 Author Share Posted January 27 (edited) 14 minutes ago, dbminter said: A sector by sector read approach, as ImgBurn would do, would be faster than the somewhat brute force method that File Explorer does. What BD drive are you using, BTW? The locked up responses sound more like hardware inconsistencies, which would be down to the drive. For instance, it rarely takes more than 10 seconds for a folder's contents on a BD-R to be recognized on my system in File Explorer. My BD-R drive is an LG WH10LS30 with firmware 1.02 which is the latest available according to the LG support website. Edited January 27 by AlbertEinstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbminter Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 I'm not familiar with that model. I have used the WH16NS40 and NS60 before. I used the NS60 for years. I never had such issues. Firmware probably wouldn't make a difference in a case like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlbertEinstein Posted January 27 Author Share Posted January 27 46 minutes ago, dbminter said: I'm not familiar with that model. I have used the WH16NS40 and NS60 before. I used the NS60 for years. I never had such issues. Firmware probably wouldn't make a difference in a case like this. I just used ImgBurn to verify the disc and it finished in 12+ minutes. No reported errors. So, this is the randomness I speak of. But again, it might be more related to the Windows software than my hardware. ImgBurn had no trouble at all verifying the disc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbminter Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 That sounds a bit slow for a BD-R. Unless it was a DL BD disc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlbertEinstein Posted January 27 Author Share Posted January 27 1 hour ago, dbminter said: That sounds a bit slow for a BD-R. Unless it was a DL BD disc. No, it's not. Although, I have some BD-R DL I have burned, this specific disc isn't that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbminter Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 A write of a full BD-R should take about 15 to 20 minutes at 12x and a read operation is faster than a write. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlbertEinstein Posted January 27 Author Share Posted January 27 39 minutes ago, dbminter said: A write of a full BD-R should take about 15 to 20 minutes at 12x and a read operation is faster than a write. This is all well and good but I specifically do my burns at 2x because I'm very safe and conservative about the process. Does the burn speed literally burn the maximum read speed into the media as well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbminter Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 No, the Read speeds are set on the media regardless of the maximum write speed used to burn a disc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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