Question BurnAware Trashes BD-R Disc

[simontompkins]

Hi,

I've been burning avi and mp4 files from an external hard drive to BD-R disc. Most have been fine but I've just trashed two discs and I think the issue may be read/write speed.

1. I've tried moving files from external HDD hard drive to internal HDD to see if windows has trouble moving files as a way of seeing if windows has an issue reading them . It's picked up some bad files but I've just trashed two discs and this is the BurnAware log file:

Data Disc - BurnAware Free
Files: 22, Folders: 2
E: PIONEER BD-RW BDR-207
BD-R, UDF 2.01, 53940 KB/s

Disc #1 of 1
[16:01:45] Applying settings
[16:01:45] Checking files
[16:01:46] Preparing compilation
[16:01:46] Anti-sleep mode activated
[16:02:04] Burn process started
[16:04:16] Closing track
[16:04:27] Burn process failed (A write-error occured.)

Total time: 00:02:41
Average write speed: 4.3x (19333 KB/s)

1. Oddly BurnAware burns most discs at 2x even though the discs are rated at 6x
2. The discs are 50pcs Cakebox Verbatim 43812 BD-R SL Datalife 25GB 6x Inkjet Printable
3. The two trashed discs were both burning at 4.3 speed and Burnaware doesn't let you change the speed, it claims to recognise discs but I've always used the same BD-R discs and yet sometimes it goes up from 2x (its usual speed) to 4x even though discs are rated as 6x
4. In attempting to find out what was happening I'm using Windows 10 file explorer to burn the files - if that finishes (its currently in operation - I'm looking at two hours to burn the discs. What I'm seeing is that on a couples of files the data read/write goes down to zero so my guess is that there's some sort of file corruption on some files. Windows seems to be able to deal with zero read/write before continuing to write when BurnAware stopped and produced the above log. I don't know if Windows is copying bad files or if for some reason the files is somehow reading poorly ( disk fragmentation is showing as fine but there are thousands of files on the external 2 TB drive the files come from so maybe no fragmentation means its as unfragmented as it can be - its been years since I formatted the whole external drive - which is why I'm moving the files to BD-R - I've freed up over 0.5 TB on the drive

Any suggestions as what I can do. I've been transferring files between external hard drive and internal hdd to file check but I've got hundreds more files to burn and would rather not have to keep doing this - is there a free AVI and MP4 file checker ?

Would increasing the cache size on BurnAware give the software more time to deal with times it finds reading a file challenging?


In case cache memory size is an issue I note that my current memory is:
Total Physical Memory 8 GB
Available Physical Memory 2.98
Total Virtual Memory 16 GB
Available Virtual Memory 7.71
Page File Space 8 GB

Under Windows 10
Pioneer BDR 207BK - it cant be this as its burned a couple of TB in the past few weeks but included here for info

Any suggestions much appreciated

 

[Ralston18]

How old is that Pioneer burner? How much past use? Consider that the last couple of burned TBs' have taken the burner past its' designed in EOL (End of Life).

= = = =

"50pcs Cakebox Verbatim 43812 BD-R SL Datalife 25GB 6x Inkjet Printable "

Are you confident in the source and quality of those discs? What may have once been a good product overall may no longer be..... Lots of cheap and counterfeit products out there.

If your hardware and software are limited to 2x or 4x, it is a bit moot if the discs are capable of 6x. 6x likely determined/established under ideal circumstances....

And you/Burnaware are actually copying files versus moving files - correct?

Is there some specific reason/requirement to burn to discs?

You may be able to save time and effort by just saving the desired files to an SSD. Or two.

 

[simontompkins]

Hi Ralston18

I think my question could have been put better, I was attempting to ask a software question.
Thank you for the input.


The burner is fine it burns and continues to burn non problem file.
I've used the BD-R discs for years from a good source so that's not it.
The hardware/software is not limited to 2x or 4x- sometimes it has gone up to 5x speed and is successful, just on this occasion it went up to 4.4x speed and I wondered if that was a factor on this occasion.

Having done further research and testing, the copying and moving of files seems to the issue.
Test.
1. I used Windows 10 burning capability and watched it burn the same files for two hours or so burning the data. While burning took significantly longer I noticed that at least five of the files went through times went the data read by Windows went to 0 kbs It took a few passes before Windows was able to recommence burning. That in itself suggests that BurnAware has a limit to how many times it can wait for data. So it stopped when it ran out out time to write data.

2. Windows 10 reported that the disk is not fragmented. So I downloaded another disk defrag utility. It showed disk fragmentation at 34% and even then the data map of fragmented file looked far higher - looked to me more than 50% of the files were fragmented. I tried to get it to run defrag but after an hour it had only got to 1% so my guess is that it just couldn't cope with the disc. While I have hundreds of large files 0f between 450 MB and 4 GB, I have thousands of files of between 1 to 25 MB.

3. The disc is also 80% full. It's a SATA 5400 rpm drive that I probably should have replaced a while back. I certainly should have backed up long before this. As I'm sure you know, once a SATA drive gets to 75% or more capacity, then read speeds can start to drop. All not good news when burning data.


4. Forgive me, I had to smile when you asked if burning to BD-R was a requirement. I have around 8 TB of files that I am in the process of burning. I've burned something like 7 TB of files; thank fully I'm on the last leg. If I used SSD I'd be looking at around 600 for only 8TB and then I'd need another drive for some sort of resilience; over a thousand for not very satisfactory storage and strictly speaking wouldn't count as backup. SSD's are very good are very particular uses but a terrible backup solution.

5. I was looking at an LTO 4 or 5 - you can get some great bargains on ebay but the interface wasn't designed for people outside the Enterprise environment and while tape is a superb backup media, with outstanding resilience and longevity it would also mean using quite clunky piece of hardware thats not really portable.

Result
I've now 'solved' the problem. It's a likely combination of fragmented discs, potentially corrupted files and an overfull HDD that should have been backed up and organise long ago.

So, just in case anyone reads this in future, hope it stands as a cautionary tale and so I thought I'd end with some thoughts based on what happened to me and also pick up on some of Ralston18's very kind suggestions and advice.


Backup strategy.
Case Study
Hundreds of files of between 450 MB to 4GB
Thousands of files between 1 MB and MB

1. Calculate the data that is in each tier. Enterprises tend to work on a five yearly cycle so your strategy should be based on what you've done the past five years and to account for the next five years - at least double your storage capacity for the next five years.
2. Tier your storage.

i) In my case I would have been far better suited to buying 2 x 1 TB drives for the thousands of small files I have. None of them are for the same use as the big data files so it would have made sense to keep them separate.
ii) For the large files I need either 2 x 2TB or 2 x 4TB bus powered drives, the difference is with 2 x 2 TB drives I keep a copy of archived large files on two drives and importantly don't write to them once I've done all the archiving. With 2 x 4 TB drives I could add new files but at some point you have to regard a HDD (or even an SSD for that matter) as a poor backup medium, reason being it will fail eventually. So moving the big files onto 2 x 2 TB drives and then leaving them gives the greatest chance you can leave one of the drives alone and only use the other one for reading. Given that I'm only writing data on both drives once and most HDD are rated at around 1000TB of writing thats pretty high resilience.
iii) Have a third set of drives for new files. Probably 2 X 2 or 4TB for all new files over the next five years.

NAS
Two 8 TB drives in a RAID 1 array is tempting but I only need backup, I don't need a media server, FTP or anything else. Plus, most files I only need to archive and don't need to access very often. RAID 1 would give resilience but if either of the drives failed (and you must consider that it will at some point) I'd be looking at buying another 8 TB drive. I'd be buying large storage repositories for files I hardly ever use, Also it would be a very un-green solution - NAS costs are very small in terms of electricity but I'd still be using more electricity than if I'd archived off data that I rarely used and continued to us bus powered drives which consume less electricity.

Silverstone
A solution that is tempting is the Silverstone SST-DS223 External dual-Bay 2.5"" RAID enclosure w/ USB 3.1 Type-C gen 2
Bus powered and with RAID 1 and consequently two disc. However, that solution would still mean keeping more date on it as a storage solution rather a more archival approach.

RAID 5
If I had the money I'd also be tempted by RAID 5 or 6 storage. That would give resilience and more archival confidence but that's significantly more expensive than the solutions above. Running costs in terms of electricity would also be un green.

Final Note:
Don't let your storage creep up so far you're in a bind about what to do next and if you leave it too long it can be a real headache getting it done as if anything fails you realise you could lose years of data. Imagine that your current data storage will fail today and act accordingly.

Thanks again to Ralston18 for the input