A high quality RITEK product that will consistently burn your valuable data.

The biggest problem with recordable media is determining which brand to trust. I can honestly say that this batch of RITEK media has had no junk discs at all. We have used these discs in over four different burners around the office in the past few months. RITEK is a manufacturer of recordable media that sells these discs to Memorex who then relabels and distributes them under their own name. This is considered common practice in the industry.

My review of the Memorex 16x DVD-R was an adventure in DVD testing tools. To say I had a blast finding these tools on the internet would be an understatement. I never imagined so much work had been done in this field. Best of all the tools are free except for the the media wasted in the testing process.

Testing
First let's test disc writing with the Memorex DVD-R. Using Nero CD-DVD Speed 4.7.7.5 in the "Create Data Disc" benchmark, I was able to reach a maximum write speed of 16.27x with a starting speed of 6.74x and an average of 12.08x on my LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1P. A smooth linear graph was created for the disc, no anomalies or spikes occurred during the write. A spike or blip in the graph would indicate problems with manufacture of the disc.

Next, we test the disc reading. Using Nero CD-DVD Speed 4.7.7.5 in the "Transfer Rate" benchmark, I was able to reach a maximum read speed of 16.28x with a starting speed of 5.80x and an average of 12.18x on my LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1P.

What does this all mean? Simple, it verifies that the disc can be safely written and read at speeds of up to 16x.

Finally, let's examine the disc quality. After tests in both the LITE-ON and IDE-DVD ROM 6116, the disc received a Quality score of 99. When compared against results from other discs online at the Digital-Digest forums, this was a great score with only a few discs out of several hundred getting a 100 Quality score.

Use
An important footnote to the results discussed in this review is that your hardware can affect DVD read/write performance. A system with a slower DVD drive or an inadequate amount of RAM could not achieve the benchmark results above. In fact, before using any DVD recordable media you should consult the manufacturer's website to see if any hardware updates are available.

Several DVD authoring packages are on the market today. My experience has shown that these packages will create junk discs because of improper software configuration. Never assume that the DVD media is to blame. If you are repeatedly junking DVD's consider upgrading your RAM or hard disks to meet the needs of the DVD authoring package.

DVD Burners Tested In:
LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1P OK

DVD Players Tested In:
Below is a list of DVD players that worked with the Memorex DVD-R media.
LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1P OK
IDE-DVD ROM 6116 OK

Disc Specifications
DVD-R
Manufacturer: Ritek
MID: RITEKF1
Write speeds: 2x-4x-6x-8x-12x-16x
Blank Capacity: 4.38Gb
Layers: 1

Website Reference
Nero CD-DVD Speed, the website features the DVD testing utility used in this review. http://www.cdspeed2000.com
Digital-Digest forums, discussion on how to use the DVD testing utility: http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=66993

Summary:
To submit a review that simply gave my stamp of approval on a common DVD-R was not enough for me. I can now safely say that not only does the Memorex 16x DVD-R pass a complete benchmark suite but that it also has given my software company a reliable backup solution that will last for years to come.