how many times can you reuse a dvd rw disc?

[joe113]

Just wondering how many times you can reuse a dvd +rw disc (philips). So far I've reused one about 30 times without problems, will it last much longer?

thanks,

Joe.

[Taelon]

According to the official Internet DVD FAQ "DVD+RW media can be rewritten about 1,000 times".

CDRinfo did some testing about 5 months ago of DVD±RW media and scanned the media after the 1st, 5th, 50th & 100th burn. Here's the Phillips test results.

They concluded:

What we did witness and it seems to be the case with most of the media we tested, is that they all need a couple writes/erasures in order to "settle in" afterwhich we had lower levels and fewer errors. Most media also produced fluctuations in speed near the end (outer edge) of the media. In almost all cases, the writing quality was good while in some, simply excellent. This is also due to the good writing quality of the Pioneer drives we used. After 100 burns, the media were all still in good condition for which we didn't have any doubt since most manufacturers declare 500 burns or more as their limit.

[LT. Columbo]

yeah i can vouch for some of that. i have 10 dvd-rw's and for i think all of them i had failed burns on them the first or second burn. never had a failed burn on any of them since now that i think of it---and i do some serious cpu intensive multitasking when i write to these usually.

i bet scratches are more likely to make the disc fail than wearing them out---good rw's anyway

[joe113]

thanks guys, 1000 times eh. Looks like I've pleanty of time left then. Once again you have proved to be a wealth of knowledge.

Cheers,

joe.

[LT. Columbo]

"thanks guys"

always willing to help any way

[katana]

I bought some Philips DVD+RW discs (media code RICOHJPNW11.9) a year or so ago. I stored them carefully, out of the sun etc.
However, one of them, after about 10 rewrites, failed. The other 2 are still OK. So sometimes it seems they don't last very long. Hope the rest I got are more robust!

[LT. Columbo]

try memorex dvd-rw's out of 10 all are still mint

[nwg]

I have been using the same Philips +RW's since June 2003. They have been erased at least once a week since.

I have seen some +RW's play up after only a few erases. I found out that they were poor CMC media. Also, I found out that they got erased better using DVDInfoPro rather than software such as Nero. Nero introduced read errors at the edge of the disc (failed the Read Error test in DVDInfoPro). If I erase in DVDInfoPro. There was no errors.