A half-year longevity trial for rewritable DVD media identifies a champion after 1,000 cycles, demonstrating that top-tier discs are out of production — half a year of evaluations reveal TDK as the obvious frontrunner, while Verbatim and Memorex performed poorly.

A tech enthusiast has shared his DVD rewritable endurance findings. In an extensive blog post, Dr. Gough Lui describes his test methodology and discusses the results in detail. Sadly, the best DVD rewritables from the six months of tests Dr. Gough completed - TDK branded discs - are no longer being manufactured.

Dr. Gough initially describes his method for conducting the trials, which lasted for a full six months. The evaluation procedure was mechanized with a Python script, because just assessing a single DVD for 1,000 cycles would require ~21 days. The script also documented findings, with screen captures provided.

A pristine Lite-On iHAS120 6 served as the hardware for conducting the evaluations. Beneficially, it allows for error detection including jitter, plus the doctor possessed a couple of backups. Following several preliminary configuration actions, it was determined to employ a pair of these units concurrently to ensure the testing sequence didn't consume an entire year…

Each test loop included a disc write, then data verification, a transfer rate test (RTT), a quality scan to check for PI/PO errors and jitter, and an erase cycle. This loop would continue until verification failure. “The criterion for disc failure is set as the first verification run that fails due to an error,” the physician noted. The final value is precise ±3 cycles.

Dr. Gough admits there were limitations to the experiment and methodology. Firstly, the life cycle result “is valid only for the combination of burner and disc tested,” says the doctor. Moreover, limited resources and time meant that only a few DVD samples were put through the test regime (as charted below). The documentation specifies that every entry in the test summary represents one individual specimen of every accessible DVD rewritable. An additional complication for the testing process was that “some discs return very poor error scan values but remain readable and vice-versa.”

Dr. Gough subsequently reviews every one of the specimen disks, offering extensive observations regarding the subtle details of the outcomes and their consistency with predicted values. The material also features a compelling side-quest where the doctor employs a Nu Tech DDW-082 drive, which supposedly could recover rewritable discs through a capability labeled ‘DC Erase.’

The TDK 2x DVD-RW (TDK502sakuM3) was the only disc to survive beyond 1,000 cycles of the testing (or 2,000 if you count the write and erase separately). It was clearly the top performer. This disc led the charge for the DVD-RW camp against the DVD+RW side.

Additionally, regarding the – vs + subject, it was fascinating to observe the first option command the highest rankings. Numerous factors might explain why this occurs in an evaluation of restricted scale like this one. To illustrate, the ‘minus’ media could potentially function slightly more effectively with This Lite-On drive hardware/firmware than ‘plus’ media. Or the triumphant ‘minus’ rewritables had some benefits with respect to degradation of the phase layer material.

As for current stocks of DVD-RW and DVD+RW discs, only Rewritable media from Verbatim, Maxell, Ridata, and SmartBuy-labeled brands are available at Amazon.

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