what's better for your laser, a scratched original or a fine copy?

[Sload02]

hi,
that's one thing i've really asked myself for quite some time; i think everybody knows this situation: you have a pretty scratched game from ebay and make a copy of it, but what does actually wear out the laser more? i'm talking about both ps1 and ps2 games. would be nice if some of the pros would give their opinion on this one

[dlanor]

hi,
that's one thing i've really asked myself for quite some time; i think everybody knows this situation: you have a pretty scratched game from ebay and make a copy of it, but what does actually wear out the laser more? i'm talking about both ps1 and ps2 games. would be nice if some of the pros would give their opinion on this one

While it may be true that burned discs require a slightly more intense laser beam than original discs, when both are in mint condition, it is also true that any disc which is hard to read will cause the console to try abnormal laser intensities in its attempts to read it, and that is much more harmful than the slightly raised intensity used for burned discs.

So in my opinion an original disc which is so badly scratched that it forces the console to do frequent retries to read its sectors will be much worse for the laser, aging it at a much more rapid rate, than normal usage with a burned disc in good condition.

Best regards: dlanor

[No.47]

I agree with dlanor.
However i'd like to add that the 'qualitiy' of your selfburned copies is also very important. Certainly it's a huge difference between a cheap CD-R / DVD-R burned at high speed and a quality CD-R / DVD-R (i.e. Verbatim) burned at lower speed regarding wearing out your laser...

[dlanor]

I agree with dlanor.
However i'd like to add that the 'qualitiy' of your selfburned copies is also very important. Certainly it's a huge difference between a cheap CD-R / DVD-R burned at high speed and a quality CD-R / DVD-R (i.e. Verbatim) burned at lower speed regarding wearing out your laser...

That is true and has been discussed many times before in these forums, with the consensus being that neither slow nor fast burning is ideal. Instead it is better to keep somewhere in the middle between them...

Discs are normally specified with the MAX speed at which they can be expected to work satisfactorily, and it is also assumed (falsely nowdays) that this range of operation also includes all lower speeds, but that is no longer true. In aiming for higher speeds the lowest burn speeds have become unreliable and unsuitable for use... (affects readability like overexposure in photography).

Roughly one may say that for a high-quality disc today, it is equally unwise to use a 1x burning speed as it would be to exceed the max specified speed by 1x. And the ideal burning speed, offering the best readability of the burned media, should be somewhere in the middle of this range, so a little over half of the max specified speed.

For example, with top quality discs like the 'Verbatim AZO 16x DVD-R' that I use, the ideal speed is somewhere around 8x-9x, and if I use Auto settings with my burner that is also what I get as an approximate average.


On low quality discs, on the other hand, none of the above is true. This is mainly because their makers always lie about the capabilities of the media, making it necessary to use speeds far lower than the specified maximum to gain reasonable functionality (because that lower speed is the true max speed). And the ideal 'mid-speed' range for such a disc often lies in the range between 1x and 3x, which has given rise to the modern myth that 'slower is always better' among those who use these crap media for backups. That myth is true only for such crap however, and not for real quality media.

Best regards: dlanor

[Sload02]

thx for the replies!