Choosing blank DVDs

Which blank DVDs are the best to buy? What format should you get — DVD-R or DVD+R? I needed to find the answers, and I figured I’d share them.

I have two main uses for DVDs: Long-term archiving of important things, most notably photos and video of my son; and everything else.

That "everything else" means things I want to keep safe for at least a few years: Monthly backups, movies I’ve downloaded, software, and so on. I want good-quality disks, but I don’t need to pay the premium for top-of-the-line media the way I do for my photos (and I usually just want to pick ‘em up at Staples quickly).

Even for something I only planned to keep for a week, I wanted something that would write every time — I didn’t want a brand that generated a lot of coasters.

So I went looking for two different kinds of media: top-of-the-line, and very good. My DVD burner supports both DVD+R and DVD-R disks; does it make a difference?

I read technical articles and customer reviews on a bunch of sites. A lot. And it didn’t take long for the consensuses to appear. Here’s what I learned.

0. Any kind of DVD-RW or DVD-RAM disk (that is, rewritable) isn’t suitable for anything long term, so scratch them off the list.

1. DVD+R is better for archival storage than DVD-R. I could write a lot about the technical details, but others have done that. Essentially, DVD+R disks have better error-correction qualities, so if the disk does degrade a bit over time, you’re more likely to be able to recover the data.

For everyday use and non-archival storage it doesn’t make much difference, and DVD-R disks tend to be slightly less expensive than DVD+R (two or three cents per disk).

2. Dual-layer disks (indicated by a "DL"; e.g., DVD-R DL), which hold about 8.5 GB of data, aren’t worth the premium price. It’s better to use two standard, single-layer disks.

3.The best disks are made by Taiyo Yuden, known simply as "TY." They’re the ones that everyone and his grandmother who gets geeky about blank disks recommends.

Some disks sold by some companies are made by TY — Maxell, Sony, and others are made by TY. But the only way to be sure of getting a TY disk is by buying one that’s branded as such. There are a lot of fakes out there, so only buy them from a trustworthy source. (Supermediastore.com seems to be a favorite, and it guarantees that its TY media is genuine TY.)

4. Among brands that you can buy at your local office-supply or electronics store, Verbatim is the best one to get. Its products use excellent technology and get great reviews across the board.

(Verbatim also makes UltraLife DVD-R disks, its high-end archival quality disks. I suspect they’re excellent, but they’re much more expensive even that Taiyo Yuden, and none of my reading indicates its worth it.)

Oh, and everyone says Memorex are crap.

So here are the bottom-line recommendations:

For long-term storage of your most important stuff: Taiyo-Yuden single-layer DVD+R disks. About $45 for a spindle of 100.

For movies and software and anything else you might want for 10 years but not necessarily for 100: Verbatim single-sided DVD+R disks. About $37 for a spindle of 100.

* * *

The whole blank-disk thing is a lot more complex. People will match brands of media to brands (and even models) of DVD writers. You can more less for 8x disks than for 16x disks… or, oddly, you can sometimes pay more. You’ll pay less for plain silver disks and more for white disks that are ink-jet printable. And so on.

But in the interest of keeping things simple, remember three things: DVD+R, Taiyo Yuden, and Verbatim. And you should be happy.