5 Common Disk Burning Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Though some people speculate that DVDs and optical drives in general are on their way out, the truth is that compact discs and DVDs will probably be with us for awhile. One of the major problems with burning DVDs is that they're often difficult to create reliably without any problems. There are plenty of mistakes that users commonly make that waste discs and time when burning DVDs. Here are the top five DVD burning missteps as well as how to avoid them.

Setting The Speed Too High

DVD burners and multipurpose optical drives are rather amazing creations when you think about it, capable of writing millions of bytes of data per second to discs flawlessly under most circumstances. Still, they are operating at thousands of revolutions per minute and aren't completely infallible. To ensure that your DVD replication doesn't result in errors, select a write speed of 8X.

Using Deficient Media

Not all blank discs are creating equally, and using lousy DVD-Rs or DVD-RWs is the surest way to create a disc that won't work when you pop it into the tray the next time around. To avoid this annoying scenario, make sure that you only use the best DVDs you can find. Spending a little extra on optical media can save you a lot of frustration further on down the line.

Forgetting to Verify Your Disc

One of the most common mistakes that many users make when performing a DVD replication is neglecting to finalize their burn within the DVD burning software before removing the disc from the tray. Every program designed to burn DVDs, whether it's running on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux, features a "Verify" step at the end of the replication process. Just make sure to click "Finish" or "Verify" before you call it a day.

Running Too Many Programs While Burning

You wouldn't think that multitasking on your PC while running a DVD replication program could cause an error in your burn, but it does occasionally happen. A modern operating system is a complicated beast, and unexpected consequences crop up when you're burning DVDs with too many programs open. Try to minimize the number of applications you have running while creating a burnt disc.

Using a Drive With Outdated Firmware

If you've got an older PC, there's the possibility that the firmware that your optical drive originally shipped with is buggy and suffers from unreliable performance. To rectify this problem, make sure that all of the drivers and firmware for your specific model of optical drive are up to date. Oftentimes, more recent disc burning software won't work properly with older DVD drive firmware, so play it safe and get the most up to date firmware available for your hardware.

Parting Shot
While optical drives can be temperamental at times, they're still a crucial part of our modern computing lifestyles. DVDs offer some of the cheapest storage you can get your hands on in terms of dollars per gigabytes, and they're fairly reliable if you know what you're doing. If you follow the simple DVD replication tips listed above, you should realize a positive outcome when burning your important data to disc.