As a result of a recent fiasco with an external hard drive, I decided to clear an internal 200GB HD by recording the RAW and Tiffs therein to a few blank DVDs I have lying around.
Almost a couple of years ago, I bought a 25 disk spindle of a very cheap (at the time) unknown brand of 4x DVD-R, in a store called 'Crazy Clarks', which name perhaps doesn't inspire much confidence regards quality.
I burned a couple of discs at the time, to try them out. They seemed okay, so I bought another spindle, then forgot about them because other more recognisable and confidence-inspiring brands soon became available at a similar price, if not quite as cheap.
Not being one who likes any form of waste, I decided yesterday to use up these blanks even though they are only 4x.
I was in for a surprise. My Pioneer DVR-109 burner really likes these discs. They are a true 4x. What's more, the verification speed progresses from 5x to 10x with no dips. I tested the transfer rate using Nero 7. It fluctuated between 3.9x and 4.2x. The average transfer rate was 4.1x.
I've never seen this level of consistency before. I'm used to 16x discs burning at 8x or 12x at best. 8x discs burning at 4x or 6x, and 4x burning at 2x. Verification speeds seem to vary even more greatly, sometimes dropping into the kilobytes/second rate.
Even though these discs are rated at only 4x, the total burning time plus verification time seems no greater than the faster 16x discs.
The brand is XLogic; manufacturer's code is DKMZ01; capacity is 4.38MB; burn time is 14.38 min and verification time much less.