I shall retire my current disc and whip out a new one for my backups.

You can also test the disc using for example "Nero DiscSpeed" (can be downloaded here). Make a "ScanDisk" scan, than you will see, if some sectors are not OK, it's enough if they are OK on the lowest speed. During the time I was using DVD+RW for backups, I burned my discs about 50-60 times, only one failed, all others are still OK and usable. Btw. if you see some damaged sectors, if you erase the disc completely (not fast erase), most of the time this fixes them.

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I use Nero myself, rather enjoy the DiscSpeed tool. However, I wouldn't use any disc that has any errors. Also, there is only so many times the dyes in the disc can be burned before they lose their ability to reflect laser light accurately enough on reads. I wouldn't trust any disc that has been burned 50-60 times myself, but your mileage may vary.

Sorry to reply Siran d'Vel'nah but seems you may have it worked out .

Yes you can load windows from a usb and yes it is very quick .
Yes RW disc's will stuff up quicker than what they are spose to which is 1000 times .
Yes there is a limit on changing a setting in the drive so you can only use it 6 times this is called the Region Code you are permitted to change it up to 6 times after that it is stuck on the last region it was changed to

all way better to put your optical rom drives on last 2 ports in case you deside to add more HDD and set them up as Raid.

Little char's like what you saw in your BIOS are a warning your Firmware or the drive is a either going to go caput or needs updating a quirk of computers .

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I wouldn't trust any disc that has been burned 50-60 times myself, but your mileage may vary.

I wouldn't trust any disc I haven't tested after burning regardless of how many times it was burned. The disc that died for me did it after maybe 10 times, than it was suddenly not burnable anymore, the drive would not even erase it. Other discs from the same package as I said up to 50-60 times and no problems at all, all sectors "green" and the drive does not need to slow down on any place.

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Link when you by a spindle of disc's say 50 i've always found aprox 10% will fail . Unless you pay top dollar 10% at least will fail .


You pay for what you get

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I have an older Core2 Duo system on a Gigabyte motherboard. A couple of years ago it lost the onboard network controller, however after a reboot it comes back up, but the HDD activity light stays on all the time.
I'm happy to keep the network controller & have the HDD LED permanently lit.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Due to most things being downloadable rather than buy on CD/DVD etc, and I don't watch movies. I have removed optical drive from PC case and use a USB connected device, only connected when needed.

[- snip -]

Greetings WK,

I use the DVD-RW for doing monthly backups of certain data that I need to keep safe. Besides, you cannot install an OS without an optical drive. Not that I know of anyway... ;)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

I did say I use an external drive, this one,

This sleek Samsung SE-506AB External Slimline USB Blu-ray Writer in black has both a DVD-RW and Blu-ray-RW functions.

It fulfills all the requirements I, and son, need one drive between two users.

Greetings all,

@Link: I tried Nero DiscSpeed with disastrous results. When trying to scan the disc the program locked up and I no longer had access to the optical drive. I could not eject the disc. I decided to use the emergency eject port and the drive put out this horrendous loud buzzing sound. I shut down the PC which stopped the buzzing. I started the PC and the drive was acting normally so I hit the eject button and pulled the disc before the PC got out of POST.

@Glenn: I do not change the Region Code and am wondering why this even entered the topic. I had the optical drive on the last port of the 6 port Intel controller when this happened again. I now have it on the first port of the 2 port Marvell controller.

@WinterKnight: You said:

I have removed optical drive from PC case and use a USB connected device, only connected when needed.

That could mean any number of things: A USB optical drive, a flash drive, a USB HDD, even a USB external 3.5 inch floppy drive like I have (which I don't use).


Ok, here's the current situation: Everything is running normal, as far as I can see anyway. The CD-RW I was using was really old, I got a pack of them back in '05, '06, something like that. I have used it several times before this. For the backup I did yesterday, I used a much newer, never used DVD-RW disc. I tell you I should have been using it all along. What took about 20 minutes, give or take, with the CD took less than 2 minutes with the DVD. I like it!!! :)

So, let's see how this goes. If this should start happening again, where the HDD light burns continuously without a flicker, then I will start suspecting the optical drive as Glenn has mentioned. I checked the firmware and it is the most current so there's nothing I can do about that. I just got that drive last year when my old one took a dive. But, that's not to say that there isn't some manufacturing defect that only occurs occasionally. Wish me luck... :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

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CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

With all of the CD RWs and DVD RWs that I've used so far, I found that after a while the CD laser stops working, which can cause all kinds of weird behaviour on start up. In my present DVD RW the CD laser has also stopped working, so I can't use any CDs in it. But since it still reads DVDs without a problem, I see no need to change it.

It could read all 5 of the Far Cry 4 DVDs. I will assume it will be able to read however many DVDs GTA V will throw at me. And if not, that's then when I will exchange it. I only use it for reading of game DVDs anyway. With over 2TB of drive space in my PC, I hardly see a reason to uninstall games these days, while any other data (music, films and series) gets sent to the NAS, which at 4.5TB is too big to backup anyway.

But Rick, if you only have the problem at startup, you may want to try to hibernate the computer instead of shutting it down. Then all data in memory gets written to the hard drive, before the computer powers down. This means that Windows doesn't have to seek for drives and drivers and such, the next time it'll just start up from where you left off.

Mind, the other option is sleep, but that saves all data to memory and leaves minimal power on. If power goes here, you have to restart from new. With hibernate you can even take the computer apart (done that) and it won't break the quicker startup.

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Link when you by a spindle of disc's say 50 i've always found aprox 10% will fail . Unless you pay top dollar 10% at least will fail .


You pay for what you get

10%??? I don't know how you get such failure rates. I buy not the cheapest but not much above it. I burned now about 2000 discs (R, not RW), I had nearly no failures at all, definitely less 10 and 3 of those was a dying burner and not the discs.

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Link when you by a spindle of disc's say 50 i've always found aprox 10% will fail . Unless you pay top dollar 10% at least will fail .


You pay for what you get

10%??? I don't know how you get such failure rates. I buy not the cheapest but not much above it. I burned now about 2000 discs (R, not RW), I had nearly no failures at all, definitely less 10 and 3 of those was a dying burner and not the discs.

Theres a big difference between r's and rw's . r's are 1 burn only rw are re burnable , different type of disc completely

Link when you by a spindle of disc's say 50 i've always found aprox 10% will fail . Unless you pay top dollar 10% at least will fail .

You pay for what you get

10%??? I don't know how you get such failure rates. I buy not the cheapest but not much above it. I burned now about 2000 discs (R, not RW), I had nearly no failures at all, definitely less 10 and 3 of those was a dying burner and not the discs.

Theres a big difference between r's and rw's . r's are 1 burn only rw are re burnable , different type of disc completely

I've always felt that RW blanks were a false economy, especially for something important like a backup. A lot of time wasted with all that erasing and formatting, and some doubt (in the early days) about compatibility in whatever replacement drive you're trying to restore the backup from.

Link when you by a spindle of disc's say 50 i've always found aprox 10% will fail . Unless you pay top dollar 10% at least will fail .

You pay for what you get

10%??? I don't know how you get such failure rates. I buy not the cheapest but not much above it. I burned now about 2000 discs (R, not RW), I had nearly no failures at all, definitely less 10 and 3 of those was a dying burner and not the discs.

Theres a big difference between r's and rw's . r's are 1 burn only rw are re burnable , different type of disc completely

I've always felt that RW blanks were a false economy, especially for something important like a backup. A lot of time wasted with all that erasing and formatting, and some doubt (in the early days) about compatibility in whatever replacement drive you're trying to restore the backup from.

The only use I can think of for RW discs is if you have got to catch all your fave soaps ( and don't have a life) . The cost if discs is pence so whats the point in them and to be honest I wouldn't trust a rw disc to use for a back up . I know sods law all to well

Link i look for the cheapest mate so what if a few fail at $20 ozzie can't expect much for a spindle of 50 disc's . The fail rate goes down if i burn at slow speeds , most times i forget and burn at full speed

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yes mark i'm with you on that . Also someone will come along and erase it by mistake plus there to slow . Starts to hang your machine particularly if your using it as HD

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Glenn savill wrote:

Link i look for the cheapest mate so what if a few fail at $20 ozzie can't expect much for a spindle of 50 disc's . The fail rate goes down if i burn at slow speeds , most times i forget and burn at full speed

I pay ~15-20€ for 100 discs, usually no failures at all... 10% would be completely unacceptable for me. But I burn them only @4x or 6x.



Mark Stevenson wrote:

Theres a big difference between r's and rw's . r's are 1 burn only rw are re burnable , different type of disc completely

I know very well what Rs and RWs are. Never had any significant failure rates on any of them.

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I've always felt that RW blanks were a false economy, especially for something important like a backup.

Not if you check the disc after burning, just as you'd had to do with Rs if you want to be sure. Considering how often I burned all my RWs, I saved quite a lot, so IMHO using RWs for data, that's gonna be replaced in 2-3 weeks or so anyway, is a good idea.

A lot of time wasted with all that erasing and formatting

Optical media are slow anyway, hence I swithed to USB-HDDs for beckups about 3 years ago, the amount of data I backup today on weekly basis would not be manageable with DVD-RWs anymore (I've backup before only most important stuff, now I can simply backup everything I want). Long term HDD is probably even cheaper than RWs and saves me lots of time. I wouldn't want to return to optical media for backups anymore.

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I burn them only @4x or 6x.

That's the difference Link i'm burning at 12 -16 x if i burn at your speeds 4-6 they don't fail .The disc's say 16 x but fail if you do them at that speed 10% of the time

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