Hi. I use to buy verbatim dvd discs which were very good discs, so when I needed a larger storage medium I bought Verbatim Blu Ray Discs. Never Again. I have now burnt close to 300 Bluray Discs for archival reasons. 1 year after burning the first disc I am now going back to read those discs and none will read. Its not my drive thats the issue it is the discs themselves. The most recent burns I have done read just fine in all my Bluray drives and copy just fine without any hiccups. However when I started copying the series of discs that I started a year ago that is where the problems start. I burned using ashampoo burning studio and did a verification on each disc burnt. All passed with flying colors. I had read on newegg which Is where I bought the discs from that people were experiencing disc rot. I kinda laughed a little and said that cant be. Anyhow I had already burnt 200 discs and didnt want to change the brand and format of discs I had used. I wanted them all to look the same. So I continued to buy them. Now I am attempting to call corporate office to see about getting all my money back. My data is gone and they knew they had a problem with these discs but yet keep putting them out on the market to sell. I am also considering a lawsuit. Some of the data that i archived contained family video footage and pictures and pretty much our scanned family documents for generations. I figured if i did two or three burns with each disc that the chances of me losing that data was very slim. However I learn now that that is definitly not the case. I dont see the little splotches that every one else is considering to be disc rot. My discs look perfectly normal however if you try to read from them it doesnt work. I recomend to everyone that instead of archiving to blu ray discs is to use hard drives instead. My new master plan is to attempt to salvage what i can and start buying 2 2 terabyte harddrives. Fill one of those with files and then copy that harddrive to the second hard drive and then store the second hard drive. I will keep buying them in pairs and do the same thing to all of them. Its cheaper and doesnt take so long to burn and verify. If anyone else uses these discs here please tell us your experience with them. Here is a link to what i use so everyone else can compare to see if they use the same: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130070
Yes. I tried playing the video straight from the disc and it worked fine. I tried every other one just to make absolute because I didnt want to lose my only copy of the files. I tried them right after they passed verification. I also copied about 1 in 10 just to make sure they would copy back to the computer and they did. I have kept a detailed excell list for disc information just so I would have my stats on each disc. How much gigabytes I used and what files were actually on the disc(things of that nature) Anyhow I also had a check mark next to each disc on the excell spreadsheet that I actually did check and copy back to the computer that way I would know. I didnt really understand why i made that particular column in the spreadsheet but in light of whats happened I am Glad I did. By doing it that way i went back and checked the discs that I had previously checked just to see if they would copy and they didnt. Some files will but others wont. The Current disc I am attempting to copy has been copying for 16+ hours and still not done. I am no slouch when it comes to computers. I have a home server that stores my media and things of that nature. It serves up all my media to our tablets and phones and other laptops and such. Each built desktop has raid1, blu ray burners, and each is connected to an lcd big screen. I also have one connected to my projector in the theater room. I am also the owner of a local computer shop that specializes in home theater setups and business networking /security and pos equipment. Even with this knowledge though it still never prepares you for total loss of data like this. I have a call in to someone named Bob from the corporate executive office of the president at Verbatim. they have some explaining to do. As soon as I get a call back from them I will post what I learn here. Think about this. I back up all customers data to bluray. I make 2 copies of their data just in case something happened to the first disc they would still have a second disc. We are talking pictures, music, and whatever else. I used the same discs that I used for my own stuff. Now I have to call everyone and have them bring in those discs and I am unsure what to do maybe Ill buy everyone an external hard drive out of pocket for them to put their data on. Ill take it on a one on one basis but I told them that verbatim was the best and those discs would lasts for years. Anyhow, I have customers that are solely relying on those discs and now I have to go back and fix them all some how. I understand that its not my fault that this has happened but still at the same time I have to make sure everyone has a valid working backup. I do not want to get sued for something like this. I can see it now computer tech said my data is safe and backed up but he lied News at 10. Or city Loses all data backups from previous years due to faulty bluray media and quack of a computer tech.
It should be noted that these Blu-ray discs are the Verbatim LTH discs, not the "regular" Verbatim Blu-ray discs.
