When was the last time you coastered a disc?

[captainspud]

I was thinking about this today... I don't think I've had a CD coaster on me for years. Compare that to 5-10 years ago, when I lost 20% of my discs.

Is it the burners? The CDs? Both? What's gotten better?

[zuludelta]

I think I started noticing lowered incidence of failed CD recording about 3 or 4 years ago. It could have been any number of things responsible for it, though: I'd just started using Nero software (I was previously using some free Italian software of dubious quality... I'm cheap like that), and I'd upgraded from a 600 Mhz PIII with one of the earlier commercially available CD-writer drives (writes CDs at 2X speed!) to a more contemporary machine.

But the most likely reason is probably better media... I remember reading an article somewhere that stated that CD-R defects were the most common cause of failed CD burns, so if there's a general perceived improvement in the recording experience, it can probably be traced to that.

Which leads me to wonder how many people encountered the 4x DVD-R problem. It turns out that certain Pioneer DVD drives (the DVR-A03, DVR-A04, DVR-103, and DVR-104 models... the latter two were installed in many Compaq PCs and Macs) could be irreparably damaged by reading 4x DVD-Rs. I didn't even know about the problem until my DVD drive stopped working after I tried reading data off a 4X disc.   

[Glitch Girl]

We burn a lot of backups here, but I haven't had many "coasters" despite the volume.  I still get one or two but that's usually due to some kind of data mismatch error, and the second attempt will a) be fine or b) indicate a corrupt file from the source. 

I agree, it's probably better quality media in general. 

(totally off topic, somewhere in the last 36 or so posts, I broke 9,000.  er... yay?)

[Protomorph]

I coastered a disc just recently. I took it from the stack (brand new package, actually) and it refused to burn. I tried it several times. Finally I tried another, and it worked. Guess it was faulty media.


By and large, though, I don't get many bad burns. When I do start to, it typically means the drive is wearing out.