I always verify discs after burning, and in my experience dual-layer discs failed verification much more frequently than single layer discs.

A different burner or disc brand might be more reliable than mine, but as long as dual-layer discs are much more expensive and much slower to burn than single layer discs, I'm not gonna bother with them for data backups.

i heard all the precautions, but i still want to play with a DL once in my life! Most of my new laptops, including one I bought in 2006, are bragged as DL but never try to burn any because of the prohibitory price, until now.

BTW, I have never verfy the movies and mp3s I burned. I did once verify them, it NEVER pass verifications, 3 yrs ago when I first started using DVD+. Never had any problems with CDs. And DVD- always fails. Disc played just fine sometimes. The last time I verified any burning was last Xmax, about 10 months back, and NOT even 1 failed. I am afraid, the verification is 'graduating' with the technology... I know this is NOT scientific, but that is MY experience. Quite a lot coasters 2-3 yrs back, never 1 for the last 12 months!

I still appreciate the warning though. As I said, people NEVER do any backups until they get burned. I was one of those, never do back up when I first bought my 1st HD, until burned badly, and now I back up everything, including mp3s downloaded.


bun

isn't it cheaper to buy an 8G usb thumb drive instead now?

nope, not by a long shot.

from my experience you get a 8GB thumbdrive for the price price of a 10pack of DVD's.

thats with individual covers.

if one go for the spindles, the price vs capacity goes even more in favor of optical media.

I usually buy 100 disc DVD+R spindles for about $20. That's over 400GB of storage. So, flash and magnetic discs are still more expensive than optical per GB.

The small size per disc is inconvenient, but at least it's cheap.

Sorry I think I mislead you. What I quote is for a 50 pack spindle, so, as others posted, 50 X 8.7G = 435G for $35, optical disc, vs 8G for $25 thumb flash drive.


bun

ah, I see. current best price I can find is GB£10 (US$15) for an 8GB drive, but they are a bit easier to use than DVD+-RW/DL :-)

I finallly able to burn my 1st dl DVD mp3, after 5 months.

DVD burner, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827136152, $25 shipped. The burner came with SATA cable and power plug, and Nero Essential 7 burning software.

Media, 8X, http://www.buy.com/prod/memorex-50pk...205147220.html, $32 shipped; 64 pennies a piece.

It took me 5 min to open my 12 month old HP desktop, slipped in the LG drive. WinXP installation for another 5 min, reboot, burn 7.5G mp3 as a data disk, 1870 pieces of music, burned at 8X, finished in 12.5 min!

This 7.5 DVD DL has been successfully played on seven desktop/laptops of 5+ years old.

I think the DL technology is still young, I would NOT trust a DL to backup important stuff. But use it as a throwaway media, burn music or movie to take it along to camping or travelling, 8.15G space, for 64 pennies, .... I know, I know, there is Blue ray, pocket hard drive etc, for now, this is my throwaway media.

Of a side note, I tired and tried to upgrade my 12 month old brandnew HP desktop, which came with a so call DL capable DVD burner, google the latest firmware etc, it NEVER even able to burn one disk, what a sucker! I tried for 5 months. It is NOT worth it. With the DVD burner coming down in $, for $24, give you a burner with Nero burning software, buy a new DVD burner makes more sense than monkey with your existing burner.

Anybody wants to share their BlueRay experience. lets use these thread as a forum for DVD burning -

"Come on baby light my fire,
Try to set the night on fire, ..." DOORS

"I am the god of hell fire, and I bring you
Fire, I'll take you to burn
Fire, I'll take you to learn
You're gonna burn, burn, burn,...." Crazy world of Arthur Brown

2 of this baby will give me 16G of music, WOW!

bu(r)n

that throw away part is a important thing that more and more people miss in their comparison of media.

media becomes throwaway when the price for new is so low that you can hand one off without worry about getting back at some point.

it also helps that one can buy the media in bulk, 10-packs or bigger usually. floppies whas like that, optical media is like that below the latest variant. i just wonder when flash media will hit that point, if ever.

I might have a use for these as I use dvdr's as a hard copy backup for any movies or shows off my dvr. Otherwise, I keep everything on the dvr itself.

As far as HD or Thumbdrive vs dvd goes, dvd is cheaper, but thumbdrives and hard drives give you more than one write per device, and over the life of the device, if stretched out beyond the one use limit of DVD's, or even the multi-uses of dvd-rw, HD's and thumb drives are still cheaper, and a ton faster. You just have to view it from a long term perspective rather than a typically short term one.

Now as far as stable archiving goes, DVD's are perfect for long term archiving up to 50 years (honestly, I don't trust mine beyond 5 years, but that's just me).