How To Choose CD/DVD Archival Media

(Last updated January 11th 2013)

Translations: Serbo-Croatian by Jovana Milutinovich



Short history of the Compact Disc






Short history of the DVD




Why archival media is hard to produce







Why Taiyo Yuden media, and how to buy in the US




Why DVD+R?


















And finally, the end of the article…







Samsung: Samsung is currently producing two drives worth owning, the
Samsung SH-S222AB


















Written by
Published in
Transmissions from the Little Blue Marble

Published October 30th, 2006


1,250 Responses

Wow Daniel, I find it amazing that you managed to comment, yet not read the article at all.

I recommend Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim. 8x and 16x is the maximum speed you can burn the media.

My family is trying to make a family album on a DVD. What is the best media to use. What is 8X or 16X. Thanks so much.

Most likely, yes. I’ve had no issue with them.

I wonder if you think that Verbatim DVD+R Double Layer has the same archival properties as the +R?

They’re Panasonic burners, and they work fine. I have one in my Powerbook and I haven’t had any problems nor have heard of anyone else having problems.

Terrific Article–Thanks for the continued efforts.

One question, I use an Apple iMAC which has a “Superdrive” (MATSHITA burner with ATAPI interconnect).

What do you think of this drive for burning integrity? Any other recommendations for either internal (ATAPI interface) or, if necessary, a Firewire Interface?

Thanks Tons–

Less than a year ago, Verbatim came out with this gold media. I’m pretty sure they made it because people keep falling for the advertising that surrounds gold media.

If someone is willing to pay $2 per disc, Verbatim has a right to get in on the action too.

Its made with the Verbatim quality everyone knows and loves, but I still cannot honestly say I believe its better than their usual DVD+Rs.

As for testing, no, you can’t possibly do the test outside of force aging. I tend to divide numbers like those by four, it gives a much more realistic expectation of how long something will last.

I’d love to see a huge ass impartial test, but except for that one that the Library of Congress did (which I still think was tainted by gold media fanaticism), it ain’t happening.

I trust you. You seems to know what you’re talking about. It’s not that.

But if Verbatim has archival properties why do they manufact and market an archival grade DVD-R with dual gold/silver reflective layer that they claim last longer according to own tests with forced aging.
Is it only to meet the competition from other brands and to have this type of product to be able to get some marketshares. So their competitors will not be alone in this segment of products?
But if their basic DVD is as good when it comes to archival properties then you can say they are fooling us to buy more expensive DVD’s and make us believe that they will last longer.
I like to see impartial tests with all brands that now has DVD’s that goes under the name “archival” and see how they stand against common DVD’s. That should include both aging and durablity against scratches and so on.
Since many of them claims that the archival DVD can last 100 years under right conditions you might wonder if one can do such a test?
What’s your opinion about this?

Well, thats the fallacy I explained in my article. No manufacturer of gold media has proven that their media lasts any longer than TY or Verbatim’s.

For the cost of over three times more per disc, I expect the gold media to last three times longer or take three times more abuse or survive in three times more unfavorable conditions.

Instead, the gold media survives, statistically, around a percent better than TY’s archival-grade non-gold DVD+R: in other words, on most tests, within the margin of error.

They may say their media is better, but they can’t reasonably prove it.

With archival grade I mean those with a gold layer and that market themself as archival grade in the name.
I have now found some that produces those in DVD+R like Mitsui Gold (4X) archival grade that comes in both -R and +R.
You say that all Verbatim are archival grade and maybe so but they have a special “archival grade” DVD-R with a with a dual gold/silver reflective layer
that they claim last longer.
And that comes only in DVD-R and as you claim that DVD+R is a better format with better error correction I would be interested in a Verbatim archval grade DVD+R. So why don’t they manufact one?

You have it backwards: no one produces a ‘value’ grade of DVD+R: all DVD+R produced by TY and Verbatim are archival grade.

I have notice that there are now several brands that produces DVD-R archival grade. But I have not seen any DVD+R archival grade yet.
Are they more difficult to produce?
I think they shouldn’t be..

Yes I’ve seen that URL, and I wonder why they haven’t updated it, or added additional information. Verbatim sometimes buys TY discs and slaps a Verbatim label on them: thats the only outsourcing I’ve ever seen them do.

And that bit about greedy companies? No, the companies who invented DVD-R were greedy, DVD-R uses a data layout incompatible with DVD-ROM. DVD+R, on the other hand, uses DVD-ROM’s format with completely backwards compatible changes.

As such, the booktype hack works on DVD+R but not on DVD-R, tricking most “pirate proof” DVD-ROM only stand alone DVD players into playing DVD+Rs. Also, many early DVD drives for computers can’t read DVD-Rs, but they can read DVD+R fine (even though the format was designed after their production).

I don’t agree with the politics behind DVD-R, and it gives the entire DVD community as a whole a black eye. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter in the long run: TY and Verbatim both make DVD-R and DVD+R, and they are all of very similar quality. I just prefer DVD+R because of an increased chance of data recovery in the case of damaged media.

This site shows that Verbatim can outsource to numerous manufacturers:

How/why do say Verbatim quality is equal to TY?

On another page, the above site says about DVD+R “invented by greedy companies that were unwilling to pay royalties to the DVD Forum in order to use and develop the DVD-R format and/or use the DVD logo.”

They pretty much give DVD+ a black eye.


Thanks for a great article!

Maybe in the far future, possibly. Solid state media that can survive the read/write cycles that modern magnetic media in the common hard drive can is about $50 a gigabyte, where enterprise quality drives are about 20 cents a gigabyte.

Ask me again in ten years, the answer might be favorable then.

Very good article, being in the computer industry for many years and to say I’ve burned over 10000 discs probably to date. I’d have to agree with your choice, I as well went from Plextor to Pioneer for my latest drive of choice with duel layer concerns. I was looking to find out how long data would last on different types of media and found this article had answered many different media questions I’ve pondered over the years. I will look forward to trying Taiyo Yuden media soon.. What are your opinions on solid state memory now that prices have been dropping so rappidly. Do you ever see solid state memory as a new method towards future large data backup media?


There is a link on the PLEXTOR site to a store that sells factory reconditoined PX-712 and and PX-716 burners if you must have one.

I use DVD+R myself for most things; but never hada problem unzipping archived files to a desktop again and again…

Well, theres two things that might be going on here. You may have a bad batch (it very infrequently happens, maybe one in a million spindles); or your Sony DVD player is randomly freaking out for no good reason on TY media.

Talk to SMS and see if you can exchange the spindle for either another TY spindle from a different batch, or a different brand altogether. They’re usually good about this.

Thanks for your article. I have just purchased a 100 disc of Taiyo Yuden DVD+R from SMS, although there were no markings anywhere that stated “Taiyo Yuden.” They were not on a spindle and only wrapped in plastic. I have burned the same video (movie)onto 15 discs. Six of those were failures. Thru Nero Vision, they showed to be burned successfully, but on Sony DVD Player playback, they had “broken frame freeze up” that stopped in the player. They would eventually “release,” but would skip far ahead of freeze point. Also, I took a copy I had made that I knew was good and made three copies using Sonic MyDVD Copy. One copy was good, the other two had the freeze-up during playback. Is my disc burn failure problem one of bad media or could there be something else to cause it. I’d truly appreciate your thoughts.

Thank you.

I regularly recommend Verbatim media in cases TY isn’t available, so you’re fine there.

Also, consider buying larger packs than 10 discs at a time, you’re paying too much per disc.

Sorry for not reading all the 41 pages of comments before replying, but:
I live in Lithuania and there is a problem with getting TY DVD+Rs as i could not find any shop which would sell these.

I want to copy all the home movies from VHS to DVDs.

I recently bought Verbatim 10pack cake DVD+R 16x Advanced AZO+ disks which are MCC 004 for 12,99LTL(3,75€) and i wanted to know, how would you rate these disks as a long-term storage? Is its quality far from TY?

Thank you

I know about splitting into MAM-A and MAM-E (yes, my CD-R are MAM-E), but I thought they maintained the original quality. Thank you once again for your answer! So we’re still sticking with TY (or at least Verbatim media)…

MAM no longer produces media. What you have is media produced by MAM-E.

The original MAM company produced very high quality media that would easily be considered in the same class as TY and Verbatim, however MAM many years ago was split apart into two separate companies: MAM-A and MAM-E.

MAM-A and MAM-E, although starting from greatness, fail pretty hard. Their media is pretty much shit, and they should not be confused with the original MAM company they came from. MAM-A and MAM-E are only riding on the original name alone, no quality is to be found from them.

Most likely, your discs will be totally corrupt within 2 years.

I have a question about MAM media (Mitsui Advanced Media) – I red a lot of reviews claiming that their media is most recommended for archival (they even produce Gold Archive 650 MB media). I finally found some MAM CD-R – ordinary 700 MB, claimed to be produced in Europe (God knows where) and I burned 8 of them without problems at 48x speed (which is max for my writer).

What’s your opinion?

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