RitekG05... high quality media? Cheap high quality media?

I have been reading a lot on these forums and have read that long ago Ritek discs were absolute garbage, but their newer generation discs are quite good. www.meritline.com labels Ritek Ridata as extremely high quality discs. Is this correct? I want to make a huge purchase (500-1000 discs) because I need to reburn every single one of my DVDs (guess who burned ~300 Princo blanks... I pray I can still read the data off them @_@) and need to be absolutely sure that I am getting quality media, for as cheap possible :P. A couple things I have questions with/need guidance about:

(Please note that the DVDs I will be buying will be burnt with the Plextor PX-716A)

1.) Many people seem to perfer DVD+R media. I have read on the forums that the main reason for this is that there is too much low qualtiy DVD-R media floating about. Should I look into DVD+R media rather than DVD-R as I have been buying? Almost all of these DVDs I will be reburning are file DVDs, not DVD-Video DVDs. I have also heard DVD+R media is better for data archival, how true is this? (I have heard differing opinions from different people, and differing opinions from various places on the forum and have kinda started thinking I guess it doesnt matter... hmm)

2.) The burning speed. I take it 8X is the optimal speed for obtaining both good speed and good quality? Or should I just stick with 4X? I know I bought a 16X burner, buuuut 16X does not seem to be... good yet, at least not on the Plextor..

3.) Authentic media is a big concern. Meritline and Rima are trusted places right?

4.) Quality media. The data I will be burning will probably only be read off the disc 2-3 times, and the discs will be stored in a filing cabnet-like setup in dark and dry conditions. So the main factor that will contribute to deterioration will be disc qualityk, rather than environment and laser-rot. These discs have to last until the next generation of optical media (Blu-ray?) becomes affordable and then will be reburnt, which will probably be at least 5 years or even more. Princo discs last like... 1 month, lmao, will Riteks last long? Somewhere on the forum I have read that quality media will last 20+ years, and with the new dye (which one is it?) the media will last 50+ years. Both meritline and rima don't seem to be too good at telling you what dye the discs use, or even very good at telling you the Media ID for some of their media.

5.) Silver Shiny, or Silver Matte? I will be putting CD Labels on these, which is better if CD Labels will be used? Someone in another thread said they like matte cause the shiny ones are fingerprint and dust magnets.

6.) Cakebox... a MUST. Absolute necessity. I ordered shrink-wrapped CDs before, and its hard to store them so that dust does not collect on them. With a cakebox, you put on the plastic cover, and everythings great.

7.) Customer Support. The place the discs are bought from need to have a return policy that allows return of bad batches and fake media, if found to be fake. Meritline seems to have a 60 day money back guarantee.

Here are possible deals I have found.. care to help me pick or suggest others?:
RitekG05 8X DVD+R 500pk .44 cents/disk free ship
RitekG05 8X DVD-R 500pk .45 cents/disk after ship, if the picture is correct these cakeboxes come with a handle! SWEET!
RitekG05 8X DVD-R 500pk .43 cents/disk after ship
TYG02/TY02 8X DVD-R 500pk .48 cents/disk after ship
RitekG04 4X DVD-R 500pk .38 cents/disk after ship
TYG01 4X DVD-R 500pk .38 cents/disk free ship

Why don't you just go to Office Depot and pick up Maxell discs for $0.39/ea. out the door? You say you care about quality, yet you want to spend the least. Those statements are rather contradictory - if you care about your data, you should be willing to spend something to protect it.

Ritek G05s are okay discs, they will probably be fine. Think about just how important your data is. Sometimes people exaggerate it's importance - a Hollywood movie is one thing, a home movie is another. If you're backing up mostly the former, don't sweat it - so you won't be able to read Mr. 3000 in 5 years from now - if you like it so much, repurchase the original DVD for $2.99 from the discount bin. If you're backing up the latter, get high-quality discs and be done with it.

I purchased ritek +8 G05 media labled as Memorex.

The batch I received wad bad. Multiple power calibration errors (Drive was unable to adjust to the media.). The ones that did record pause an pixilate are various parts of the media not just the end.
I have had no problem with the drive used. A BENQ 1620 B7P9 firmware.
Since the Ritek disks I have burnned Sony D11 and Ty T02 with no problem.

Memorex replaced the whole spindle of 50 with CMC media ( Quality? )but can`t replace the wasted time.

I would figure that Ritek would send grade A+ media to Memorex so buyer beware.
Carthoris

A couple problems with that.
1) There is no Office Depot here, only Office Max
2) I highly doubt that they will have 500-1000 blank DVDs in stock for me
3) If you can get high quality discs for 2 bucks a pop or you can get high quality discs for 60 cents a pop, would you not go for the 60 cent discs? I am not asking for 10 cent discs that pwn more than any other, I am asking for high quality discs for as reasonable price as possible, therefore I am not contradicting myself.

Just wondering, do you have any scans of these discs? On what basis are you rating these discs? Some numbers would be nice ^^

Yeah, if they were just movie backups, I wouldn't be sweating it :P I do want high-quality discs, and that's why I started this thread :P

CMC media, from what I have read, is terrible, almost as bad as princo.

Hmm, that worries me. Could these disks have been fakes? Also, just wondering if you had any scans of them. Maybe I should just get the taiyo yuden blanks? But I've seen many not-so-great-worse-than-my-ritek-G04 scans of them in the plextor scans thread...

Ritek Garbage were u here that nonsence for exe: princo is garabge i have over 250 ps2 backs ups on ritek g04s they all play perfect moives and games work great on ritek i heard the newer ones has s***y die though and didnt work very well in ps2s

Stay on topic. We are discussing G05 not G04. G04`s have been great media for me.

I don`t have any scans of my bad G05`s.

I try to buy only TY media, Its not worth having problems in the future. You stand a better chance with TY media.

Carthoris

Actually, you should be fine with a lot of media. For all but the most precious of data, as long as your scans are not horrible, it does not matter if you average 5 PIE or 150 PIE or even higher. The DVD standard was created so that error-correction ensures you can read your discs. Those numbers are more meaningful when you burn the disc in video mode.

For very important data, you want to burn 2 copies - I would use different type/brand discs. But this is only for paranoid-type data, i.e. pictures of your offspring as a baby, etc.

CMC is not the old CMC of CD-Rs. I've had great success with CMC E01s, although YMMV.

If you had an Office Depot, yes they probably would have had 500 discs - mine does. Do you have a Best Buy? Circuit City? They run specials almost every weekend, and you should be able to pick up discs that are at the very least better than the G05s at a comparable, or lower, price. Unless you need all the discs at once, build your stock over a few weeks. Get 100 this week, 100 the next. You can burn and scan the ones you have an try another brand if the results are not satisfactory. You got a bad batch of 50 discs? Try to return them, etc. - worst case scenario you lose 50 discs - not 500.

Recently there was a deal for TY 4X at around $25-35 online. That's a no-brainer, if the slower speed doesn't bother you. If you burn so much, it's probably not a bad idea to have some on hand.

I don't have any more G05s, they were just okay. I've never burnt a coaster so I can't speak badly of any discs, but G04s were scanning much better.

Wait a few weeks for Best Buy to put up another Made in Japan Fuji/Taiyo Yuden sale. 40 cents per disc. These are 8X DVD+R media with lifetime warranty. Just look for the Made in Japan label on the cake box.

K, i see. I too have had a good experience with g04s

Actually, this is kinda thread is kinda mis-titled, i guess. Its more like a quest for cheap high quality media XD. I see, G04s have serverd you well too.

True, it does not matter as long as its in spec. But discs deteriorate with time. If two discs age for the same amount of time, one having a starting PIE of 5, and the other having a starting PIE of 150, guess which one will have a MUCH better chance of surviving The lower the error rates, the longer it will take the disc to deteriorate.

True, but impractical for so many DVDs. Seeing as this is going to be an entire reburn, I truly do not have the money to spend on two sets of reburns. Remember, the goal is to find cheap, reliable media, not to find an uber-backup method. I already know that I can burn 10 copies of data truly dear to me, and put it on 10 hard drives, and up it to an online hard drive

[QUOTE]If you had an Office Depot, yes they probably would have had 500 discs - mine does. Do you have a Best Buy? Circuit City? They run specials almost every weekend, and you should be able to pick up discs that are at the very least better than the G05s at a comparable, or lower, price. Unless you need all the discs at once, build your stock over a few weeks. Get 100 this week, 100 the next. You can burn and scan the ones you have an try another brand if the results are not satisfactory. You got a bad batch of 50 discs? Try to return them, etc. - worst case scenario you lose 50 discs - not 500.[QUOTE]Ooo, now thats good advice These specials, are they specials after rebate or not? If you have to send rebates to get the specials, I don't want em. I have always had bad rebate experiences with Best But and Office Max (the two places around here).

I see, another good G04 opinion. K guess the choice is not between 4X G04s, stuff i can find locally, and the TY discs.

Oooo, I'll try that, maybe. I kinda need to get discs fast, I dunno how long my princo discs will hold...

I have had no problem with Ritek G05 DVD-R's purchased from Newegg.com

See my scans here:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread....9&page=6&pp=25

-ImBAD

Moved to appropriate forum.

Yo-

I use Ritek G05's a lot (over 150 backup burns and zero coasters) - BUT - If I am going to preserve data then its going onto VERBATIMS - Period!!

Newegg has the Verbatim's in both -R and +R 8x for $30 after MIR for 100 cakebox plus like $3.50 shipping - and they allow THREE rebates - so that covers your 300 Princos - have a buddy order another 300 and that would cover your overages-

Just my $.02 - any time you can get Verbatim landed for $.335 each - that is a KICKA$$ deal on great medias-

Mike

Well, thanks everyone, after reading the v1.04 firmware thread and seeing that the issues with RitekG05 discs are fixed, I may be getting those if bestbuy does not have the discs on special this weekend.

I'm not a fan of rebates. I have always gotten screwed on em, and have stopped trusting them at all. Thanks for your information, but I'll stick with non-rebate deals.

Btw, are the deals at bestbuy rebate deals, or not? If so, I'll just order the RitekG05s.

This thread makes no sense. Ritek G05 media has quality problems. How do you know the disks you ordered are new and improved.

You can go to best buy and purchace Fuji Ty media +R or -R made in japan cake boxes at 50 for 19.95 + tax unless you live in DE.

They have thousands in stock at my best buy`s. I am lucky and have 3 in my area.

You will then have no problem with your DVD recordings. If you have a BENQ 1620 use firmware B7P9.

Thats my two cents.

Carthoris

I agree G04 and G05 have been very iffy for the past year.
Some are great, some are garbage. Avoid them all

Trying to save a few pennies per DVD is illogical. You can't afford a 40 cents Made in Japan Taiyo Yuden disc but you have time and $ to repair those bad DVDs?

Yes, 19.95, on Saturdays right? Cause right now, they are 39.95... Also, does getting this price involve sending in rebates? (Still noone has answered that for me) I will drop by my BestBuy and will try to buy some of these disks for 19.95 tomorrow. Just as a side note, TY by TDK and Fuji seem to have bad batches/discs as well whereas the bulk unbranded TY (like from rima, for example) seem to have less problems.

Anyway, I wish I could see some bad scans of G04 and G05 (on a 716A).. all i've seen are good ones. Maybe I should have posted this in the plextor forum (where I have been looking at scans and everything). Here is a scan of one of my G04 discs, they all come out this good @_@ with the new 1.04 firmware (1.03 was also VERY good, but just a bit higher PIE rates).

Well, it seems that you're set on these G05s, even though most people are telling you it's not a smart move to buy 300 of them. I wish you luck, but I have to agree that this thread makes no sense, since you aren't listening to what people are telling you. You will probably be fine, but since you took the time to investigate, use the knowledge gained to make a smarter decision - if only to further your DVDing as a hobby.

best buy sales on media are usually with 'instant rebates" . Also they stock quite a bit on display. I've never had to be there 1st thing in the morning knocking on the door to get in on their deals. If you go there and they're out of stock, look around the rest of the store cuz they often have a separate display elsewhere. Also, wander back to the media section. Sometimes they bring more stock out while your looking elsewhere. Other stores like Office max and Office Depot have been pretty iffy for me. You got to be there at the right time, as they "run out" quickly and usually restock 1st thing in the am.

Look in the BARGAIN section of this forum. 100 Made in Japan Maxell 8X DVD+Rs for $37.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=127790

Best Buy Fiji Instant rebate all this week so its good till saturday. 50 for 19.95.

"You can lead a horse to water but you can`t make him drink."

Carthoris

furballi - the guy doesn't have an Office Depot near him; it was already suggested to him.
carthoris - besides the fact that the deal has been dead for a while (it's $39.99 now), you could not find those after the first day it went on sale.

Thank you MasTRE for clearing that up ^^
It's nice to hear that the best buy rebates are instant. However, as MasTRE said, the deal appears to be dead.

BestBuys has fuji disks in cack boxes of 100 for 39.95 starting on sunday.

If they are made in Japan you will be buying the best.

Carthoris