Hooray for Ritek! TY very much...

As a direct result of purchasing 125 Ritek G04 and 25 Ritek G05 a couple of months back, I have been led to purchase a couple of batches of TYG02 to back-up the ones that are still even recognised. I bought Ritek printable 4X media from ukdvdr.co.uk (the companies customer support was not even worth dealing with. I now use SVP) in three wraps of 50. £19.47, free courier day. The last spindle of these was mixed exactly half with 8X G05 (hmmm...), and my benq 1620 with B7P9 f/w hated them.

That led me here, and all over the net. I upgraded to B7W9 and managed to get almost useable burns from the G05's! The G04...well, I thought they were the best media ever created. All my scans were mint; min 96-100% quality, averaging 2-12 PIF max. I scanned near every one, but was so confident in my media that I never saved the scans. If I thought I could trust ukdvdr to supply unmixed batches I'd have probably bought another couple hundred for sure! (So, thanks UKDVDR!)

The earlier burns aren't even recognised anymore in dvd player or burner as being media. Total coasters. As I'm working through them I'm seeing the PIF's improve gradualy. e.g: burns from four weeks ago tend to be around 30% quality and improving on a steep curve from there. If they were burnt within the last two weeks they still look like great media.

Why don't they degrade until they are actually burned? Many (not all) of them were never played after scaning and storing but same degradation. So far, thanks to Isobuster I've saved just over half the disks tried so far from my movies. There's loads of data disks to go through yet, and about another 20 movies to check.

Does anybody actually know what happens to these disks after they are burned to cause such catastrophy? I'm going back to backing-up now, just needed a break and hoped I could warn others about RITEK problems. I'm saving my disks and will be doing scans of the currently better ones for study in this thread later. Right at this instant though, I have to get on with saving what I can.

d_dog, I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with Ritek G05 and G04 media!

You're not the first to discover this problem and you wont be the last - although that won't make you feel any better.

If the DVDs you burned are important enough for you, you migh consider getting a better reading drive in order to rescue more discs. LiteOn DVD burners are considered among the best readers, so you might be able to rescue more of your Ritek DVDs by buying a LiteOn.

You could also use tools such as IsoBuster or DVDisaster for rescuing degraded DVDs, because both of those programs allow you to read the disc multiple times in multiple drives and thereby perhaps you'll be able to read the entire disc.

There are no guarantees however - some of your discs may be beyond rescue.

Buying a LiteOn is exactly what I was thinking of doing, but these disks are getting worse by literaly the day! Isobuster is soldiering away right now, and I think it's probably doing a good job. It's just maybe one third of the disks so far aren't recognised at all, so I don't hold out much hope. They won't play in my generic dvd reader (not currently plugged in, so can't access the model) or be recognised in my standalone.

After I rescue what I can I will get some test scans going, and I hope to catch one on it's way out to show how rapid it is. Probably be a few solid days ripping, burning and scanning the rest of the duds though!

Thanks for your kind words. I'm going to take it as a learning experience, and it's been interesting so far, if not exactly happy. The rest of my media (I'll list properly later), some over a year old in identical storage seems to be faring well so far, and I'm hoping for good results and longevity with my new brand of choice! Why didn't I just buy TY in the first place? Live and learn...

Yes, that is the anomaly with the fast degrading Ritek discs, unburned, they can be stored for a long period with minimal degradation, but as soon as they are burnt, they deteriorate rapidly from my experience.

As Drage mentioned, I used a LiteOn drive to recover data from my trashed G05s. Worked very well for me.

Were the disks you recovered with the LiteOn completey unrecognised in your other drive, or were they burned with the LiteOn in the first place? Also, was there a time limit to your recovery efforts? The disks that I can't read with Isobuster spin up briefly, but don't show up any files or show as a disk present in My Computer. It's like there's no lead-in at all.

Depending on what exactly is unreadable and if the data is important enought, is there a particular LiteOn model that is a proven good reader. I like my benq, but it would be nice to have another burner. Preferably an OEM that I can flash if there is one. After shelling out for a couple hundred disks I didn't plan on, this is a kind of lean month.

Has anyone sussed out why this happens yet? It seems crazy that they burn so well stay good for a few weeks than just fizzle out like sparklers. No signs of air penetration. Dye looks flawless. It's maddening.

EDIT: Just prised one open with a screwdriver, which wasn't that easy. Disks seem very well glued. Dye oxidised very quickly. I'm speculating that perhaps the dye layer stays maleable to some degree and pressure causes the pits and grooves to disfigure. Pure guesswork. Any other ideas?

The discs were completely unrecognisable in the other drive (an LG4163B). I believe they were burned with a combination of both the Litey and LG drives.

All the Liteys I have (and the "retired" one in my sig) are great readers - two 1635S's, and a 1693S.

I can totally relate to the "lean month" thing

Another victim...

My G05's - all several months old, under the Maxell brand - are all fine. Bloody Ritek - never know which will fail - at least the Ritek +R's and F1's don't degrade (yet!)

i have Ridata G05
they did not degrade that much
PIF went from 2000 to 3000 after 3 month

I hope you're talking PIF totals, and not PIF max

There is a tiny microchip inside the discs that activate once you burn the disc.

If disc TOC > 0
set Deteriorate_Flag(True)
end



So tell me - At what speed did you burn those Riteks ? Did you attempt to over-burn them ? Did you burn at the rated speed ? I would like to see an experiment done - Burning the degrading media at its rated speed (example 8x for 8x media) and another one at 4x (for 8x media).

It's possible that a disc unburnt will last longer, there is nothing on the disc so there is nothing to check for degradation - when burnt of course any minor changes in the dye might affect the disc, which is why you will notice.

I am also wondering if SOME cases of degradation relate to a poor burn but then you said the scans were excellent.

What really bothers me and makes me want to call out bloody Ritek is the fact that this is a known problem and that nobody is confronting RITEK directly about this mess - Been there - do yourself a favour and don't use crappy media. What pisses me off even more is that on RITEK's own website they rate their media GRADE A (Probably A for arse )

That's HUGE degradation in my book. None of my good disc show any increase in totals after 3 months. Oh yes, apart maybe from the 2-3 additional PIFs due to tiny particules of dust... that's all.

A disc showing 1000 additional PI failures after just 3 months is utter crap.

Don't get carried away by this piece of information!

A scanning drive could have this variation between consecutive scans of the same disc, especially if the drive heats up.

Even the tiniest amount of dust, fingerprints or scuff marks, could easily give a 1000 extra PIF!

So there's no need to go into a state of panic just from this information.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=591

I've posted some scans from a batch of Ritek G05. These discs were obtained in May 2005 so are at least 13 months old since manufacture. Scans look ok considering other discs in this batch which were burned last year have already deteriorated beyond playability.

I have found variation according to spindle codes rather than time burned after a lot of testing. So far the K3-23L and 25L have not degraded, but as they were generaly the most recent burns I'm still testing them. The rest of the batches are as bad as you could believe and these are the ones that are still scanable. As promised, here are a selection of scans. Most of the info you need can be read from them. G04 burned 04-05-06 spindle starting K3-23L.

G04 burned 08-04-06 spindle code starting K3-22L. I have 23L's and 25L's burned older that are so far ok, but all disks with this spindle code are gone or dying fast. This was the best of what was left, and I post this so you can see the rescan in a couple of weeks time! I'm betting it dies, but wait and see...

G04 burned 17-05-06 spindle starting K3-25L. This is another code I'm watching, but all very recent burns. Look great, don't they! Ha...wait for the rescan in a couple of weeks.

G04 burned 29-03-06 spindle starting K3-05L. Utter crap, and many could not even be recognised in the drive. This is the best of them, so you can see the rescans in a week or two as it degrades!

G04 burned 22-03-06 spindle starting K3-05L. Same code as above, burned less than a week before.

G04 burned 28-03-06 spindle code K3-05L. Typical of this batch which all tended towards a quality score of 0. All scanned brilliantly just after they were burned.

G05 16-05-06 spindle starting K3-08L. These fared maybe slightly worse than the G04's. Frankly, it's a miracle the drive even recognised one of these, as nearly all were not read at all. I'll be surprised if I can even scan this again in a fortnight.

G05 burned 17-05-06 spindle code starts K3-21L. I still have about 15 of this mission impossible self-destruct batch. I intend to rescan all these disks in a week or two, so let's see if they do indeed get worse, or can in fact even be read by that time. May RiTEK burn in hell.







Remember, some of these scans may look fine now, and that's exactly why I choose these disks, as they were the best of their batches, usualy the most recent burns from dead and dying batches. I want to see if I can catch the degredation in process. I will be scanning these again in a week or two so we can all see the results. Enjoy.

Q-Scan is very forgiving. PI should be very close to 0 for good quality in Q-Scan. See pic of my everyday occasional disc below. Also you should scan @ 8x with Benq - still, the disc are bad. Well, i'm impressed by the low standarts by Ritek. Amazing there's still room for them in this world. Seems they are sub Princo, Infomedia and such these days

Get a red X for your attatchment unfortunately CJ2.

All these disks were burned at 4x, so I scanned at 4x. If anything, a 4x scan would be more forgiving, but I did not realise that 8x was the official standard for BenQ scans.

This is only my first posting of scans on these disks. I will be scanning the exact same disks again repeatedly to see if I can catch the point where they degrade. I'm not convinced the 23's and 25's will degrade, but the other batches certainly have so far, so I'm monitoring them all. More scans coming soon then!

Hopefully my scans will be helpful to other users in considering which brand of media to buy in future. As in, not RiTEK.