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01-16-2009, 11:43 PM
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Hi, great site
I have ALOT of RITEKG05, 2nd class media. I like collecting series etc. you say it's not good for archiving...how long would you say it's good for? What would you do if you had 7tb on these types of disks? WOuld you recut onto 1st class media? TIA
First, some background information, to put this into perspective...

Make no mistake, RITEK was NEVER a "good" disc. From their earliest days of CD-R, followed by their earliest endeavors in DVD-R, Ritek was often considered to be a mediocre media company about on par with Princo, in terms of disc quality. (At the time, Princo was an infamous manufacturer of low-grade/mediocre-grade blank discs.)

Princo actually got worse as time went on, while Ritek had a few near-unbelievable bouts of "good luck" (that's what I'll call it). In about 2003, the 3rd line of Ritek media, known as RITEKG03 DVD-R was one of the first discs to hit the $1.00 (USD) mark per disc, to the delight of the masses, who dreaded paying $5 per disc for Mitsubishi, Taiyo Yuden, Maxell and Pioneer media. Those discs were better (less fails, better reading, higher scanning performance, etc), but Joe Consumer is often led around by his wallet more than his sense of quality.

Now, the RITEKG03 discs were quite decent as compared to earlier Ritek DVD-R, but they were still a far cry from the better discs just now mentioned. Ritek has never been very highly regarded in "the scene" (individuals and companies who buy and burn lots of discs -- thousands of them -- and then go online to discuss their experiences), but a lot of new folks ("newbies") were seduced by the low price and decent results, often touting it to be "the best" disc around. It wasn't really true, but these people had themselves a happy party anyway -- for a short while.

Towards the end of the RITEKG03 line, and the early days of the RITEKG04 line, these same people began to complain about the quality of RITEKG03/G04. People began to run into the reading/playing issues. However many of them had NEVER tested their discs, assuming that "it burned okay" meant it was a good disc -- with "okay" meaning the burner didn't not immediately spit it out as a bad burn during the burning process. This, of course, is not a correct assumption. These folks were now reading/playing and burning more discs, and they were "suddenly" having more and more bad burns. Or rather, they had just finally started to notice the lackluster quality -- something that had been there all along. The same folks who once loved the media were now coming up with myths from their own heads to explain why it was happening. Many times, these were complete fairy tales, folks attempting to create logical explanations when they had no real knowledge of the subject. Ritek actually had to issue at least one press release in 2004, to combat a couple of really stupid myths. It's really no different than Roman mythology, where a thunderstorm was blamed on Zeus being angry. It made sense to many people, but there was no science to it.

By the end of the RITEKG04 line, it was average graded media again. The "better than average" G03/G04 consumer experience didn't last very long. By the time the G05 line was here, the "good old days of Ritek" had been gone for at least a year or more. In fact, by the time 2005-2006 was here, people had become overly anti-Ritek in user forums, and it went from a disc with undeserved praise to one now receiving undeserved scorn! Oh, the irony.

If you've never tested and played every single one of these discs, then the odds are high that you'll have a good % of failed burns, and a number of stubborn-to-play discs, assuming you come anywhere close to the typical user experience. In some cases, the error correction is good enough to overcome the disc problems, if you've got a good reading drive (BTC, for example), and you use recovery software like the freeware ISO Puzzle.

Second, to directly answer to your question...

If this data is at all important to you, then yes, I would most definitely create a secondary archive. Ritek does not meet our criteria for what we would consider "archival grade" media. It is highly suggested that you purchase a good hard drive (Seagate or Western Digital, not Maxtor or Hitachi), and rip each disc as an ISO file. If you have 7 TBs worth of discs, then you'll probably want 7-8 of the 1TB drives.

If you want to create new optical discs, I would highly suggest Verbatim discs, either DVD-R or DVD+R.

When it comes to Ritek, its not necessarily the myth of "disappearing data" as much as its an issue of the discs just being naturally harder to read in many drives, being it a DVD-ROM, burner, DVD player or recorder. We've long assumed it to be their dyes, or their choice of dye/foil combo that causes this. There are some degradation concerns out there, a few of which appear legitimate, but it's not the ones you may read about in those various forums out there, where people are doing a Chicken Little with their DVDs, because they don't know how to trace the root problem, too quick to make snap judgments.

Your last course of action, a third option, would be to test every single disc in a drive, using SpeedRead (transfer rate) tests, as well as surface scans. If you get any dips or delays in these tests, and you know that you have a good DVD burner, then I'd call the disc bad, and replace it immediately. Why take a chance? Replace it with a Verbatim -- and test it too!

I guess it all depends on how important the data is.

Doing it sooner is suggested over doing it later.

Hope that helps.

I don't usually go to this much detail for Free Members (or e-mailed questions), but this gets asked a lot online, and it's about time a good answer be written up to answer it.

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