Can't read DVD

[Tim]

Allegedly, on or about 24 August 2013, Martin S sent:
> the laptop is only a few months old 

The laptop is the one with the disc reading problem?

It might be just a case of cleaning the reader.  Laptop drives are
notorious for exposing the laser mechanism to contamination.  It takes
more effort to get muck into a desktop's drive, as only the tray pops
out to the outside world.

Being brand new is no guarantee that the device is in excellent working
order.

When discs work on one device, but not another, it tends to point the
finger at the device.  It may be faulty, it may be less tolerant of
out-of-spec media, the media may just be less compatible, the media may
just be plain awful and a really good drive disguised that from you.

On that last note, a lot of media is just awful.  Since a large number
of people just buy the cheapest that they can get, manufacturers are
more than happy enough to sell shoddy goods.

When I first started working with optical media, I tried a variety out,
and quite a lot of it was marginal, a few outright crap, and a few
really noticeably good.  The quick tests were how long it took the
computer to start working with a disc just inserted.  Those that spent
ages going whiz-whir, trying to read the disc, were obviously crapper
than when a disc almost immediately starts doing its job.  Longer tests
were things like discs that failed in the middle of doing a burn of the
whole disc (quite a few would do that).  And even longer tests were
whether the disc was still use good months, or years, later.  Quite a
few were not.

I'm not going to name and shame, because my tests relate to my
equipment, it was a long time ago, and I wouldn't want the repercussions
of disgruntled companies.  I will do the opposite, Verbatim have been
the best discs that I've used, for probably somewhere around a decade of
doing CDs or DVDs, I've only had a few random failures, and one spindle
of discs that obviously were a bad batch.  With a few other brands, I've
seen 20-30% failure rates, and people seem willing to accept that,
despite how that can be a catastrophic loss of data only discovered too
late, rather than it simply being a fail while burning that will be
redone on another disc in a few minutes.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64

All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point
trying to privately email me, I will only read messages posted to the
public lists.

George Orwell's '1984' was supposed to be a warning against tyranny, not
a set of instructions for supposedly democratic governments.