cant decide which disc is better to buy: upgraded to firmware 1.03 on 3540a, verbatim mcc003 rated 8x scanned here

or verbatim mcc 004 rated 16x but burned at 8x beacuse of better quality

one has much lower pi errors and total, but higher pi failures and total,and vice versa.
which is more important? can i ignore the large total of pi errors (about 300000) because of the good overall score?
please some of the experts give me your opinion.

what if you burn mcc004 @16x? i remember reading that high speed media don't give the best results @ lower speeds

actually it doesnt reach 16x in the burning,even with all background activity off.it stays around 8x 6x or max 10x all the burn.i dont know why, is it the OPC or the software(nero 6.6.0.16)?
"16x" takes about 2 minutes less and gives worse results, like so:burned at 16x

PIF is more important than PIE, so compating both scans the MCC004 wins hands down

A PIF of 63 is awesome (but a PIF of 375 still is great too)
and to ad to that: the difference between the both PIE's is relatively smaller than the difference in PIF
looking @ these scans I say: MCC004!

(read some more about qualitity scanning in this forum, it will really help interpreted your scanning results )

do you have DMA enabled for your burner? also try to defragment you hard drive to see if it helps.

thanks people for your input. dma enabled. will defragment drive.
anyone else has some opinion? is that pie total(and max) quite high for a good quality media like mcc004 or maybe it doesnt matter?

it doesnt matter all that much, but normally you'd want it to be lower, and more "flat"..

Are your MCC004 from India and your MCC003 from Taiwan?

Liggy, they are both from taiwan,with mitsubishi chemicals written on it.
BTW,about those pie totals and max,what i am concerned with is long-time
data durability.so is it relevant?

and here is another mcc004 this time i tried at 12x (real 12x-burn time -7 min).
result seems better now i guess, and those "mountains" seem lower and smoother. still need to check why it wont burn at full 16x.
so should i keep them or switch to "<30000 total pie" mcc003?

there shouldnt really be any practical difference between those burns. you could doing some transfer rate tests, but im pretty sure they'll all come out nicely.

basicaly pie total's relation to data durability is my question.

here is another scan of mcc004 this time x16(max speed 15.4x)
this time i burned from a drive not connected to the same ide cable as the burner,and it was more successfull.(turned off background apps just in case)

burn time-about 6 minutes. is that a good time?
scan looks not so good though. guess i'll stick to 12x with this media.

still would appreciate any input someone may have...

BTW, if i use verbatim 16x -r (forgot the mid code ) can i expect better results?

a surprising mcc003 scan,from the same batch as in the beginning of the thread.
not typical and reminds me of mcc004 scans(high pie's) ,only the pif's are more crowded and a bit higher.that's one point in favour of mcc004.anyway i'll try the verbatim MCC03RG20 16x dvd-r's and see what gives.