i use unbranded riteks . CDRidentifier gives the following info:

ATIP: 97m 15s 17f
Disc Manufacturer: Ritek Co.
Reflective layer: Dye (Short strategy; e.g. Phthalocyanine)
Media type: CD-Recordable
Recording Speeds: min. unknown - max. unknown
nominal Capacity: 702.82MB (79m 59s 70f / LBA: 359845)
My Burner: Sony CRx140E

These cost £14 (which is like 21 dollars or euros) for 100 - which is cheap. My question is how good are they compared to branded and/or more expensive discs? I use these discs and they give me really good results. I'm concerned i will come to use them in a year or so and they'll be unreadable or something. Comments are welcome!

Crikey -- Unbranded Riteks @ 14p each? Where did they come from? I was chuffed with my 18p

ATIP: 97m 23s 61f
Disc Manufacturer: Customer Pressing Oosterhout
Reflective layer: Dye (Long strategy; e.g. Cyanine, Azo etc.)
Media type: CD-Recordable
Recording Speeds: min. unknown - max. unknown
nominal Capacity: 702.83MB (79m 59s 74f / LBA: 359849)

Riteks are Riteks, afaik, so feel chuffed!

The only one thing I have heard about is that with cd's that are blank both sides is that both sides are easily damagable... It seems just the layer of (whatever it is) saying TDK Reflex Ultra or whatever protects it . Never encountered any problems to do with this myself, though...

from a local CD fair. they are easily available at this price. BTW, they are white tops!

My experience with cheap "unbranded, store name" discs is that there are typcially alot of ruined ones. The first and final time I used some cheapo's 10% of them had to be thrown away.

What's your CD-R of choice then?

unbranded, ie. silver-top discs aren't very durable. I bought a 100-spindle for $30 cdn (actually 2 spindles, but returned the second one). I burnt most of the first 100, and then I needed to make a copy of one of the burnt discs. Fired up Nero, started CD-copy. The disc would not read, just pooped out with a read error at 1%. Same thing in Clonecd. Worried, I tried a few more from the spindle. None were readable in cd-copy. Yet strangely it was possible to simply copy the files off the discs with explorer, then burn them off hd. So now I have about 75 discs that aren't copyable, unless I go to the trouble of copying with explorer, which is next to impossible to do with some of the playstation backups I have. argh. The ATIP for these disks says Infodisc co. ltd. Avoid at all costs.

Also the silver-tops aren't protected by a label on the top side, and if handled alot will get wrecked easily.

Now I buy disks with nice labels, and preferably gold-bottoms. I;ve had good luck with Kodak discs, though I've heard they are discontinued now. Strangely, I just bought some white-top discs labeled Princo Budget, and the ATIP data says they are made by Taiyo Yuden, a good quality manufacturer. They are a good deal if you can find them.

1 time I bought a pack of 100 unbranded cdrs for £20. Never again! as they seem to crack if you use them more than 2-3 times. I ended up replacing my cd/dvd drive because 1 of them actually exploded in the drive which left the drive unusable!

You can use any CD you like, but be sure to use a TEAC to burn !

Why ? ONLY them have thoose cool features:

Fine Focus Control:

Besides the 'standard' buffer underrun technique and mount rainier support TEAC offers some more advances features like 'Fine Focus Control'. The required strength of the laser varies greatly with writing and reading processes. With the movement of the write head with conventional CD-R(W) drives, faults often occur when writing and reading. TEAC has made a breakthrough with the new 'Fine Focus Control' technology, in that the laser always remains constant and never enters a 'jitter mode'. The laser remains precisely in the same position on the track, regardless of the speed. This key CD writing technology from TEAC enables the high recording quality with very high speeds and results in a more precise recording, and a higher-quality disc that provides an improved level of interchangeability when read.

Intelligent Speed Control:

A further qualitative improvement is the 'Intelligent Speed Control' technology, which tests the status of the CD before the writing process using various parameters in order to determine the highest writing speed with the best possible quality. For example, the number of tracks, the disk balance, the strength of the laser, the type of disk, and any possible vibrations with higher rotation speeds are all tested before increasing the (read/write) speed.

Check out this review if you want learn more...

Marketing. These are not standardized techniques. Other burners just call it differently (Intelligent Speed Control -> SmartBurn, Fine Focus Control -> Varirec, Audiomaster...).

You can probably burn on anything. If you ever want to read your data again, you'd better use something trustworthy. I had five CRC errors on 200 CD-Rs - the oldest 1 year old. Those were Mr. Platinum medias - worthless.