Maxell 16x 4.7 GB DVD-R Spindle (50 Discs) Review

I bought this several months ago to make some video DVDs and store all my important data, mostly photos, programs, and documents. The first time I used them, they worked fine, I did not experience any problems at all during burning and accessing files in the discs afterwards. Just recently I wanted to open all my data again but much to my anger and frustration, ALMOST ALL of the discs are inaccessible and all I got are error messages. Even those discs that are readable have either small to large chunk of data that cannot be read.

I have no idea these discs could deteriorate so quickly. I didn't even use them heavily. They're still perfectly smooth, I always used them gently and always put them back to the spindle and store them away. But apparently it didn't matter, and they just broke down on their own for no reason whatsoever. Now I've lost about 70% of the data I've burned to the discs and must spend countless hours again re-collecting my data from their original sources.

I thought Maxell is supposed to be one of the most trusted name in this media. I often used their brand even back to the days of 5.25 floppy disks, and they were quite satisfactory. I could not say the same with this DVD-R. Perhaps I was just being unfortunate, and you might have better luck with it, but for me, I will NEVER buy any Maxell brand again for the rest of my life. EVER.

So much for trying to save money and not buying an external hard drive. Sigh.

Buy it here now!