How Many Burns can A DVD burner Take?

[NikolaeVarius]

I am about to reformat and I have a question


I have a lot of Data that I need to back up, and I can't buy a HDD because of money restrictions. So, I'm forced to burn stuff onto DVD's

Question- How many times can I burn Data before the Burner gets destroyed? I've burned a couple of movies in the past, which probably put more stress on the Burner, but I'm talking about a couple dozen DVD's.

Also, which is better for Burner Life, High speeds or Low Speeds. With High speeds, the parts are moving faster, but with low speed, the parts are moving for a longer period of time.

 

[Mavrick007]

There's no way to tell how long a burner will work. Sure there are MTBF ratings but that doesn't mean your drive won't fail after a few burns or a few hundred burns. I've put several hundred burns on my old burner and it's still going as well as when I first bought it.

I would not worry about burning at high speeds. Use the speed that your media is made for when making a disk. You should be able to burn hundreds or thousands of discs off of a burner unless it's a lemon.. whatever the case, don't worry too much about it cause they only cost $30-40 now if you have to replace it anyway.

 

[RebateMonger]

I do suggest moving to a hard drive backup as soon as you can. There's really no guarantee that DVD-based backups will be good. I've seen a couple of reports from technically-experienced AnandTech posters who found that their DVD data backups were not very reliable.

As noted, there's no way to predict the life of a CD or DVD burner. I've seen CD burners fail after twenty disks, but that was in 1999.

 

[0roo0roo]

yup no way to tell. its your harddrive, it migth have a mtbf of X hours, but more like an average than garrantee. your harddrive might die in 5 minutes, or 5 years, its just unknown. but you probably shoudln't worry about it failing so much that you never use it.

burner tech isn't new now... dozen discs is nothing. i've seen consumer drives burn hundreds of discs without fail.

 

[Kaervak]

I wouldn't worry about the burner,a few dozen discs won't kill it. I have a CD-RW drive from 1999 that's probably burned close to 1000 discs and it's till works just fine.

 

[Zepper]

With 160GB hard drives going for about $50. and larger at even less $$s/GB, it's hard to justify backing up any other way. But a burner should easily go thousands of burns assuming a fairly clean environment. Cleanliness is next to godliness with optical drives. Most HDDs could care less about dust...

.bh.

 

[jpeyton]

They have a lifespan of 8,592 burns, give or take 5 burns (depends on how thoroughly the lasers are burn tested at the factory). After that, a ROM chip on the PCB disables the laser diode for burning, allowing the drive only to read media.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
They have a lifespan of 8,592 burns, give or take 5 burns (depends on how thoroughly the lasers are burn tested at the factory). After that, a ROM chip on the PCB disables the laser diode for burning, allowing the drive only to read media.

Interesting info.

 

[Zepper]

Heck, I thought it was 8,593 burns as burn 0 is the number of the first burn...


Interesting, but with no basis in fact... Where's the wink emoticon, jpeyton? Some of the gullible around here might actually take that seriously...

.bh.

 

[eplebnista]

I have burned around 500 dvd-r's on my asus 16x dvd-rw and it is still working fine.

 

[Azimuth40]

Well I do not have a source for red lasers but Sharp just introduced a blue laser with a 10,000 hour life expectancy. Link to story

 

[ForumMaster]

Originally posted by: Azimuth40
Well I do not have a source for red lasers but Sharp just introduced a blue laser with a 10,000 hour life expectancy. Link to story

yes but that is, as you point out, for blue lasers which are new technology. red lasers are manafactued by a mature process that gives them a much longer life. in fact, dust and debris usually kill the drive, not a dying laser. but burners are like $30. if it die, alright. just buy another.