In order to compliment the Good Media thread, report bad media that work poorly with GSA-4163B. Provide as much detailed information as you'd like.

Bulk SKC Media 4x DVD-R media failed to start burning in GSA-5163D. The disks have no printing on the top side, only silver coating.

Strangely, I inserted one of the two failed discs to DVR-108 (fw 1.18) and tried to burn at 1x (which was the only allowed speed) and it is now being burned at 1x. I inserted the second failed disc to SOHC-1613S (fw BS41) and Create Data Disc from CD-Speed started burning at 4x. I didn't know I still had this type of media. These slow and problematic earliier generation media are taking too much time while proving to be just as useless as testing SOHW-1633S and TS-H552B for 16x DVD writing.

Please use this thread for "incompatible" media as well. Also, the types of media that are not supported for its maximum rated write speed.

One of the latter examples is Philips C16 revision 000, not 001, which is written at up to 4x only, while C16 001 is OK at 16x.

Also use this thread for GSA-5163D media compatibility.

I used one Verbatim 8x DVD+R and while it stated as overspeeded 12x it was written slower than a ny 8x DVD-R I had, with a speed of 5.8x.
The disk was in a green thin case.

This is a TDK 40x CD.
In transfer test it gave better results but in create data disk it gave not more than 24x.

What's the MID of that CD?

LG drives are notorious with CMC CD-R disks. It has been so at least since LG 32x CD writers. Especially with 40x, 48x, and 52x CD writers, writing speeds were lower than Lite-On equivalents. Lite-On 52x CD writers used to work so well with Lite-On 52x CD-R disks.

Would you like to expalin that better?I won't buy those again.I bought a 25 disk bundle.
But to write a full CD in 5 and so minutes, this is slower than my previous Sony 500AX.What do you propose?Something I could find here.

No idea. I started using Taiyo Yuden CD-R disks since around 2000. Before that, I used to have SKC, Mitsui, Ritek, etc. Very soon, I got used to having only TY media for important things, and any cheap and good media for the rest. So basically the only thing I really cared about was TY. Though Kodak and Mitsui CD-R were also sometimes available, I didn't have very many of them.

When CD writers advanced to 24x, 32x, 40x, 48x, and 52x, I really lost most interest in CD and instead concentrated on DVD and HDD. Therefore, I was never interested in CMC and such cheap CD-R disk manufacturers. I'm aware of the complaints from many LG (and also Samsung) CD writers for not supporting 48x-52x speeds for some Taiwanese media. I never cared. Why use CMC when TY CD-R media cost just as little? Chinese manufacturers sell CD-R disks for under US$0.1 per disk. But my opinion is that it is far more expensive if one takes HUMAN LABOR into account (that is, the efforts to buy and type to burn the disks.)

For high-speed CD-R burning, Lite-On CD writers are good. DVD writers really don't care much about CD-R. Quite many consumers prefer silence rather than a speed increase from 40x to 52x and that is the one logic why companies like LG and Samsung downspeed for CD-R writing. Higher-speed writing also increases risks of eary death of devices and disk explosion. (Samsung actually had to face some serious protests from such thigns that could have resulted in lost eyesights, etc.)

I have had some thouands of Taiyo Yuden CD-R disks from Q3 2003 to now. Nothing else. I use TY CD-R disks even if the supported maximum speeds are 32x to some of them. I burn CD-R disks usually only for applications. Most were just used as gifts (blanks, not written.) 8x DVD+R is 2x faster than 52x CD-R and just as cheap so no need for CD anymore for data and multimedia backup.

TY. I can't find here.
Is there a company that makes 'em under another name?
I think that Sony disks I've bought earlier(and not again)
were writing faster.

No idea what the Sony CD-R disks are based on.

Hm... Rima.com for examples has sold quite a big amount of Taiyo Yuden CD-R media at low prices. As far I could see, none of them were real Taiyo Yuden retail branded, but everyone of them was made by Taiyo Yuden in Japan. Very few people in South Korea buy Taiyo Yuden's retail CD-R media. That means, average consumers cannot know the disks they buy are made by Taiyo Yuden. Most of them really never hear of TY at all.

Hm. There must be some past threads about LG CD writers right here (where I must have posted as well but I forgot most of what I posted.)

Thank you, I will try to buy some of this and some of that instead of buying 25 spins.
Anyway as you said earlier, there is not so much need for CD's but you know...
Curiosity.

I had trouble today doing backups onto 4x DVD+RW media with MID Infodisc A10. I believe these are sold under both the Memorex and Mitsumi brand names. The backups would complete and at 4x, but the compares always failed. Burned the third time onto a Sony 4x MID disc (BenQ DVD-R) and it completed the verify fine. I also picked up a spindle of generic 8x DVD-R discs which turned out to be Gigastorage GSC003's and they were only supported at 4x. Burn quality was very nice, but the ND-3500A with firmware 2.18, and Pioneer DVR-108 with firmware 1.18 burned the same media at 8x albeit with lower quality. All of the GSC003 discs were tested on a DW1620 running B7T9 firmware using CD-Speed 3.61.

I'm using verbatim cd-r, which are CMC MAGs (white top, 100 pack) and they do very well with 4120B and 8523B.

I'm also partially using LG +R X8 (orange top, 25 spindles) which are CMC MAG E01 and do very well with 4120B.

Guess that brand name sometimes accounts for something.

Infodisc DVD-R media are pretty bad even at low speeds like 4x, 2x, and 1x. DVD rewritable media from Infodisc are not going to be any better at least from what I have seen. Gigastorage media are also notorious though far better than Infodisc. Latest GSC media seem to be of acceptable quality but far from being as good as Daxon and PRODISC media.

I can confirm Kenshin´s statement regarding the bad quality of CMC Magnetics Code: 00 97 26 66 (Nero show it as "97m26s66f"). They are sold here in Germany as 50 cakebox TDK CD-R80 up to 52x speed.

Even when burned with low speeds, they give my Plextor UltraPlex 40max (normally quite a nice drive) the creeps (or clicks) if I did not limit the Plex´ speed. Interestingly a surface scan ran without problems, but in the speed test the maximum was 24x instead of 40x on the outer sectors and the positioning test sounded like someone trying to rip the drive´s head out. Good enough for writing ISOs or Audio CDs (at least my Denon has no problems with them), slow drives read them ok.

Writing was ok with 8x and 16x speed in the LG GSA-4163B. Reading them in raw mode with the Plex was a pain. Full speed writing gave an error when comparing, but the SVCDs worked flawlessly in my laptop´s Toshiba SD-C2402. I´ll look through my log files asap and edit this post if I find more.

Avoid them at all cost!

PS: There are verbatim cd-r, which are CMC MAGs ??? Omg ... obviously in a short time there will be no good CD-R brand left

yes, I was amazed too when the media code showed cmc mag and not MCC or TY. However, these discs are rated at 48 and are burnt easily X52 on my LG cd burner.

Anyone else had problems with TDK DVD-RW?

As they're supposed to be 'Recommended Media for LG GSA-4163B' I expected better. So far, 3 unusables (despite every variation of erase/format with InCD & DVDInfoPro).

XP explorer hangs on DVD insertion, recovering only when discs are ejected.

What do you mean by unusables? GSA-4163B seems to be good even for 8x DVD+RW writing when used with all known 8x DVD+RW media. Equally good with 6x DVD-RW media. TDK DVD-RW should be as perfect whether you used 2x or 4x or 6x TDK media.

XP hanging? It doesn't look like a "bad media" problem with GSA-4163B. Perhaps disk trouble or software bug.

Most likely caused by InCD which doesn't like to share with any other software. I suggest you un-install InCD and use DVD-RAM discs if you want to write files directly to the disc.

@Kenshin:
I mean just that - unusable! Seemed to format okay, but not to read/use.
4163B works fine with Imation -RWs and other media.

@Taroth:
Have tried un/re-installing InCD. Not sharing with anything else, like Adaptec.
Happily using Maxell RAM with 4163B, too.

Maybe an InCD thing.
(Beginning to pine for B's Clip6

In that case, the DVD-RW disk was damaged or wrongly formatted or just wanted your special attention.

Damaged, yes... but with *3* disks it seems more than coincidental. Not sure I want to buy any more TDKs just to prove a pattern! Tried them in a 4040B in different PC today; same 'XP hanging' reaction, can't read/write.

Must go now. InCD requires special attention ...