Customer Reviews

Ridata DVD-RW 4x 25-pack Spindle

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Run this disk through "DVD Identifier" and it turns out this is a "restricted" disk, meaning it is intended for data only. What you want is "General Purpose" and this is not it. That probably explains a lot of the trouble people are having. Nowhere is this fact made clear for people who want to use it in DVD recorders, not computers. My Toshiba D-R2 insists this disk is "write protected".

(...)

Ridata, like many other premium disks is not everything it used to be (neither are Maxells and prodisc!), but these disks are relativly high-mid quality and a steal at these prices.

90% of burners made in last three years and ALL burners made in the last 18 months will have NO problems and anything older than that should have updated firmware anyway to best use with any blank media (it isn't like it takes more than 5 minutes to update firmware).

I have 2 DVD writers BTC 1008 (8x DVD+-R/RW) and Maddog 4x (DVD-R/RW).

These discs were recognized only in the BTC drive, as :

Media Information

Region information N/A not a DVD-VIDEO

Media code/Manufacturer ID RITEKW04

Format Capacity Blank Disc

Free Blocks 411107328

Free Capacity 4.38GB(4.71GB)

Book Type DVD-RW

Media Type DVD-RW

Manufacturer Rated Speed 4.0x 5540KBps

Available Write Descriptor CLV 2.0x 2770KBps

Write Strategy Speed 2.0x 2770KBps

Data area starting sector 30000h

Linear Density 0.267um/bit

Track Density 0.74um/track

Number of Layers 1

Complete Media Code

00000000 00 6C 00 00 01 02 D6 FD 9E D8 31 00 02 00 00 00 .l........1.....

00000010 00 00 00 00 03 52 49 54 45 4B 57 00 04 30 34 00 .....RITEKW..04.

00000020 00 00 00 00 05 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 06 15 0C 05 ................

However they failed both during DVD-Video (16%) or Data burn (100%), I have the latest firmware on my writers and the BTC's website says that DVD1008 supports RITEKW04,

I had been using RiData DVD+RW discs and was very happy with their performace.

I am not sure if these failures are due to High speed incompatibility or just bad discs, if I am not able to fix it in 1-2 days I am going to return these discs, not sure what amazon's return policy is for opened media.

My JVC DVD recorder was just introduced this year (2004). It requires version 1.1. There are no firmware upgrades.

These disks are version 1.2 and are incompatible. There is a tiny, unreadable disclaimer on the cakebox label. It doesn't give the version, but seems to warn of possible hardware damage.

And that is correct, some recorders will be damaged by trying to recognize these disks.

As the -R/RW forum rushed to the market with faster-burning disks they hoped would be competitive against the +R folks, they've simply screwed everything up. Now you can hardly buy the -R disks you need. Meanwhile people that bought -r hardware have been left high and dry. Smart thinking.

No joke, I have two burners, one I bought just a month ago, both do not recognize this media. These drives recognize other media of lesser brands. One drive is a Mad dog, the other a panasonic.

Do not buy this media, Waste of money, Bought it to use with my Toshiba XS32 recorder and they do not work so I was like fine I can use them on my PC take them to my PC and mind you I have 2 different PC DVD recorders a Sony and a Toshiba and they both wont read or write to them. These things are junk, Firmware is upgraded to latest on both drives, That is not the issue. I would give 0 stars if I could, A complete waste of money.

I've tried using these discs in several different DVD recorders and DVD burners. Same result every time, the product is a waste of good money.

I have been able to burn other RiDATA/Ritek DVD, such as DVD-R, DVD+R with different speed with my SOny DRU-500A. However, I just cannot make this DVD-RW work on the writer.

Tried different DVD burning softwares but all of them failed. I suspect that the problem is in this blank media, not in the software or hardware.

The title says it all. I can't figure out why this doesn't work. Ridata does not label their discs with versions. My recorder says it works with version 1.1 and 2x DVD-RWs but this disc gets ejected everytime I try to load it. The player reports an error "this is a non-standard disc".

While this media is new and the faster writing of -RW has yet to be perfected it is not fair to blame Ritek or Amazon for leaving out the fact that older drives (especially year old Pioneer 104s) might have trouble writing to something not conceived of at the time of production. Correct writing strategy requires that your drive firmware recognize the disc media ID code. This means that you have to visit the Pioneer website and update your firmware in order to write to new media. If there is no newer firmware you have to stick to older media. Also, both the 104 and the 106 are limited to writing -RW media at a speed of 2X regardless of the rated speed on the media.

That being said, the quality of the burn with these discs is just fair. If you want a better disc go to the much better Ritek +RWs at the same price (assuming that your drive will work with +RW).