Sony BD-RDL Recordable Dual Layer Disc - 50gb, 2X

List Price: $56.37 Discount Price: $29.99

Features:

• dual-layer recordable Blu-ray disc (BD-R)
• 50GB storage capacity
• maximum transfer rate of 72MB per second
• maximum 2X recording speed

Customer Reviews:

Turtle Fast. Easy to make into an Expensive Coaster [Posted on 2008-01-23]
About the best 50GB BD disk you can buy, but you would be much better off spending more for the rewritable version. Most of the BD burners for sale are bundled with CyberLink software which is very buggy. My first attempt with a Panasonic disk, the software crashed the computer and I got a $45.00 coaster (tax write-off). 2nd attempt with a Sony disk worked well.

Need patience for this backup method. Around 1 ½ hours to burn data even with a Gen 2 BD burner.

A brief comment [Posted on 2008-01-29]
I like the promise of Blue Ray, but as an old computer tech who's fought a lot of bleeding edge tech battles over the years, I have to warn you that the reliability just isn't there yet for the write-once disks. Although I haven't had any problems, I've heard of a number of ones relating to the write-once disks, which then become expensive "coasters." Instead, for now at least, choose the rewritable disks, which, although more expensive, you'll avoid costly failed disks until the write-once ones are more reliable.

These problems remind me of similar problems I had with ordinary CDs back in the days of early CD writer and DVD writer software. Back then, I wasted many CD and DVD disks until the software became less buggy. Still, I like the Blue Ray disks since they are cheaper for the same amount of storage than a comparable size mini cruzer, which in fact aren't even available at this size. The 15 gig mini cruzer that I bought was 100 bucks. The Blue Ray disk give you two to four times the capacity for significantly less. Unfortunately, compared to a mini cruzer RAM module, they are slow. Copying a 4 gig mini cruzer is around 5 minutes on my system. A 25 gig Blue Ray is over an hour, so be prepared for some long burn times. But overall, a big improvement in capacity over the previous standard.

Damning with Faint Praise: Expensive Turtle Coasters Revisited [Posted on 2008-03-04]
Another lifer sliding down the bleeding edge. I agree--spend another $10 to get the rewritable version.
After finally getting the settings on my Mac right (1x (ugh!!), buffer underrun protection), I managed to
successfully write 4 discs: 2 had verification failures on reread, 1 hung during verification, and 1 wrote/verified
successfully. I was thrilled--the first three attempts before calling the vendor re above cretinous parameter
settings are now...coasters. However, all in all, it's better than the 25 CDs I'd have to burn, but without charming multi-volume capability. I'm more or less happy, I guess, and think that I may be able to
read the 4 I have, if I ever need to, maybe. Hoping this gets cheaper, easier, faster soon.

Reliable archiving to Blu-ray [Posted on 2008-03-28]
I have used the dual layer media only once so far but it worked well enough to store video data up to 47 gigs or so. The media claims 50 gigs but really you can't get 50 gigs on there. Same with the 25 gig, single layer media, you can only burn 23 gigs or so. I wish Sony would produce a 4x record speed version (like Panasonic has) and of course we are all waiting for this media to drop in price now that Blu-ray has won the HD media war. Tip: Be sure you understand what version of UDF you are working with prior to burning data to the disc. Some UDF only read on Vista software. I wasted two 25 gig discs learning this.

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