Where the heck are all of the DVD-R DL disks? All I can find are DVD+R DL

[part12studios]

Hi everyone, so I've made a learning discovery..  while I do have an official Leopard DVD coming from ebay, I also thought I'd try my hand at burning some of these massive 7gb Dual Layer discs.   At first I thought I was out of luck finding a DL drive, but my work happened to have an external usb one..  yay..  then i was thinking i might have to buy some DL disks.. but then i looked closer at my blank DVDs and they were in fact DL!   wow, so much luck coming my way..    so i burn said ISOs and all was looking dandy..

Then I get home to try these new burned disks and my Quicksilver was rejecting them all.   What is this black magic?!    Well.. as the title hints..   seems my drive is an DVD- drive.. not +.  and guess what?  my DL disks are all +.  Sooo..  boo there.  now i did find some blank DVD- 4.7gb types for a fair price and have since ordered those..  BUT...  for the life of me I'm not finding anyone selling DVD-R DL discs.   I found a wikipedia patch that seems to confirm they did make DL DVD - disks.. but i can't find any for sale on ebay or google.. 

I figured someone here has possibly faced this and maybe knows either yes these are as rare as working sinclair 1000s..   maybe this was like the DVD HD format and DVD+R DL  just completely blew out the other format?

I'm now considering maybe I'd be better off finding a new DVD drive that reads DVD+ disks?   Are IDE drives for PC/Mac pretty universal?  no special drivers?   Seems like i've never really come across for a need for DVD drivers.. or CD Roms.. 

I'd love to just find some blank DVD- DL disks and call it a day, but maybe this is futile as it appears to be and thus asking for any advice on if DL DVD IDE drives are safe to use with my Quicksilver?

Thanks!
Caleb

[IIO]

i dont know it for sure, but i´d doubt that there are drives which can read -R9 but not +R9, because normally it is only the number of layers and size what matters.

not clear what exactly your are asking - and what kind of drive do you have in that quicksilver?

yes, most are +R. mabye -R are no longer made today?

[part12studios]

the quicksilver drive is a DVD- drive according to some research i did on the G4 era machines..  apple appeared to flip flop between - and + from model to model.. not consistent..   my QS doens't seem to read + disks.. or at least DL + disks.. that's for sure though out of 3 different iso's burned one would at least be read by jaguar so that complicates things..   

i have three different Leopard DVDs burned..  two are DL and one is a single 4.7gb..     so yea i'm just trying to install Leopard on my Quicksilver.    i could imagine maybe one is bad, but it seems to hate all of them as bootable disks.. 

I own two official apple versions.  one is an upgrade and the other is a full install but both seem to be a bit wonky..   oddly enough even the DVD FdB with tiger on it doesn't seem to like my Quicksilver

When I stick any of these DVD+ DL burned dvds..  it tries to read them then just spits them back out..   except one of them.. and it's one of the Dual Layer ones..  10.5.4    jaguar sees it.. you can open it and see content.. but even that one still won't boot making it useless to upgrade with. 

[IIO]

in case you are talking of the drives that apple put in, they will not read any DL. they dont even read 800 mb CDs.

[IIO]

something like that will give you everything you need. i have tried at least 4 different LG "super multi" and they all boot OS9 if that is your concern.

https://www.lg.com/us/burners-drives/lg-GH22NP21-internal-dvd-rewriter

starting at 1 dollar used.

so if you have an MDD, get 2.

[part12studios]

yea that's awesome to know..  and that's the weird thing..  one of the DL disks DID read..  but it still wouldn't boot.. but the others wouldn't even be recognized by the OS

So i got up to tiger so far..  started with jaguar..   so i'm imaging each of my partitions with SuperDuper now.  I hope to work it out this weekend

[IIO]

okay, so if your burner can read one of them - and you burnt not too fast - maybe it is just dirty or faulty.

funfact: the "best durability" race isnt between -R and +R anyway - the best durability is found in -RW, they never fail within the first 20 years.

[part12studios]

I had bad luck with -RW.  never heard they were more reliable.  I figured given they are "rewritable" the material would be prone to being altered over time.  I just found the ones i burned to have data trouble.   I've ordered some DVD-R disks.. regular 4.7gb..  mostly to test.  there is a leopard image that's an install that should fit on it. 

Yea at this point i guess i'm ok.  I've got a "new" leopard full install DVD coming that i'll test with a full install on another SSD and if it works I'll image it.  I'm not going to replace the drive at this time. 


So for leopard to get on my quicksilver it seems this time what worked (several different factors were at play so not 100% if this path is the best way..

1. install jaguar..   2. upgrade to tiger.  3. upgrade (with upgrade disk, not full install) to leopard.  4. download a new "full update" dmg  and now i have

I then 5. did a backup image of the OSX and OS9 folders so i can proceed to install drivers / software and not have to do this whole dadgum thing over again

[IIO]

1. install jaguar..   2. upgrade to tiger.  3. upgrade (with upgrade disk, not full install) to leopard.  4. download a new "full update" dmg  and now i have

I then 5. did a backup image of the OSX and OS9 folders so i can proceed to install drivers / software and not have to do this whole dadgum thing over again

that sounds like a lot of work compared to 1. install a proper drive, 2. install 10.4

[part12studios]

yea well i've had trouble with tiger as the first step..  i have two different tiger disks and they have been kinda tempermental..  one that FdB sent me for my sawtooth awhile back didn't boot on Quicksilver..  but then I think recently it did work so yea just been kinda on going not always installing so i started with jaguar

I'm hoping this new leopard disk will install direct..  no upgrading.   I started with Jaguar this time in an effort to try something different and the steps that FdB has taken for his quicksilver in the past to get to tiger.  Leopard is a new animal for me.. i'd stick with tiger, but driver requirements for some hardware drove me to push to leopard. 

[refinery]

jesus thanks for the heads up... i am going to covet the remaining -R DL media i still have....

[part12studios]

I'm kinda wondering though if the media matters less than the burner itself?   I mean maybe I'm wrong but isn't the + or - thing basically just a matter of the if you're counting dips/holes in a disk as a 0 or a 1?   if that's the case it would seem like a DVD-R burner would not care what kind of disk it's on since they use the same basic material?   

I need to try and burn some of these images though with the quicksilver drive..  i used an OSX machine with the others on a +R DL drive..   the ones i recently bought in a lot of 2 are:

1) Pioneer 48x DVD-RW DVR-110D
     in a Nextar DX Enclosure, with Vantec fan

(1) Hitachi-LG 56x HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GH22LP20

I'm believing that either of these could be -R drives..  though the - might just be dashes..  poor choice of naming when they went + or -  heh...  we'll see.

My situation was so chaotic in this dual boot process, i really don't know what the story was exactly..   my QS saw the disks on occassion but refused to boot from them.. but as far as I could tel they were fully burned / verified disks and OSX would see the disk.. just not want to boot from them.. very strange..  i will test further..  but right now i'm dealing with some other music related issues. 

[teroyk]

And this information (based my testings), maybe doesn't help you, but good to know:
- old CD-R and DVD-R drives is not sometimes compatible, with new disks.
- DVD-R 16x disks doesn't burn with 1x - 4x DVD-R drives.
- Some brands CD-R 52x disk doesn't burn (or burn with errors) with 1x-24x drives.
- Burned DVD+R/+RW/-RW disks doen't work some DVD-ROM drives.
- Even some burned CD-R disk doesn't work in some CD-ROM drives.
- Blu-Ray burners can burn new CD-R and DVD-R disks, even in Powermacs.

[IIO]

recently there was a funny debate on the fb group where somebody states that you always had to read disk at the same speed they were burned. it turned out to be a rare case of an old drive not beeing able to read a disc which was burned at 50x.

you have to assume that the faster an optical media has been burned, the more inaccurate the "printings" are; imagine the holes get increasingly more rounded corners the faster you burnt it, that should be the right picture.

if you want to take care of that or not is everyones personal decision. if the discs are for yourself and you have a desktop mac, it is probably easier to get a better drive so that you can read everything. if you are giving media to others, who have a cube or pismo, it might be wise to burn slower.

the same is true for audio CDs, btw. thats why you never gave audio masters as media but always as disc image file to your pressing plant.

[part12studios]

That's very interesting.  I definitely agree with the premise of burning faster making more trouble.  For me lately the rule I was following was to burn at 1/2 the speed of the max speed of the drive.  Nothing scientific behind it but i figured i'd rather burn slower for similar reasons.  Though I could see dumping it down to 1-2x for better measure..  I was burning at x4 with these dual layer disks..   but again.. weird that the system would read the disks fine when IN OSX but fail to recognize them when the system would boot up and launch from them. 

[IIO]

without knowing anything about it i have always intuitively avoided to burn too fast. when i have options like 4 - 48, i usually choose 16. including handling and verification this increases the process´s duration from 3 to 4 minutes, but it somehow feels better.

there is another thing which goes in a similar direction: when a CD-R is very bad and has damages from the sun or is even scratched or something like that, it sometimes can be read better with slow read times.

in 1999 i have been recommended to get an apple branded x2 reader for my emu sampler, and it turned out it can read copied disks which the 8x lacie couldnt before.

eventually the rule of thumb is that all of these problems are only present with gear older than 15 years, i.e. before last generation IDE drives.

[part12studios]

interesting, yea i've had good luck with my x4 SCSI CD Rom when reading my Peavey and Akai S1000 disks..  and the disks themselves were burned easily 20 years ago by my friend..  man time flies..

[teroyk]

interesting, yea i've had good luck with my x4 SCSI CD Rom when reading my Peavey and Akai S1000 disks..  and the disks themselves were burned easily 20 years ago by my friend..  man time flies..

Old CD-R disk had better quality. My first burned CD is from 1995 and still works, but that time CD-R disk costs 20 times more than now.

[refinery]

interesting, yea i've had good luck with my x4 SCSI CD Rom when reading my Peavey and Akai S1000 disks..  and the disks themselves were burned easily 20 years ago by my friend..  man time flies..

Old CD-R disk had better quality. My first burned CD is from 1995 and still works, but that time CD-R disk costs 20 times more than now.

97 for me and yeah, those still work too. They cost like $10 each back then.

[IIO]

M-Disc for "important" things.