RITEK Pro DVD-R Media

[Ian]

As the world’s largest manufacturer of optical storage media, Ritek doesn't need much of an introduction. The company got its start in 1988 and quickly established itself as a leader in the industry by producing the first CD in Taiwan. Ritek raised the bar once again a few years later by producing the country's first DVD and recordable DVD-R media. Today, Ritek continues to produce recordable CD, DVD, Blu-ray media as well as a variety of flash based storage products including USB flash drives, memory cards and SSDs.

While many consumers, including myself, have transitioned from optical media to cloud and flash based storage, there is still a large demand for recordable CD and DVD media in healthcare, education, government and business environments. These areas rely heavily on optical discs for large volume duplication, data storage and to store and transfer data generated by medical imaging devices.

To meet these needs, Ritek recently launched its new line of RITEK Pro media. Designed with professional users in mind, these high-quality CD-R and DVD-R discs offer superb performance, compatibility most of the popular drives on the market, high consistency with low variation from one batch to another and a shelf life of 60 years. Ritek's new media is also available with a shiny silver surface as well as thermal white, inkjet white and waterproof glossy printable surfaces.

Ritek Pro DVD-R Types.png (98.96 KiB) Viewed 13013 times

A short time ago, Ritek USA sent me a few spindles of their new RITEK Pro DVD-R media. They all had the same Japanese MID (MXL RG04) and used AZO dye. The only difference between them was the surface. As you can see below, the printable, white surface goes all the way from the hub to the edge. Ritek also claims that there is no color difference between the hub and the rest of the disc. We'll take a closer look at this later.

Ritek Pro DVD-R Surfaces.png (188.45 KiB) Viewed 13007 times

Ritek Pro DVD-R Top and Bottom.png (330.9 KiB) Viewed 13005 times

While I have been involved in the storage industry for a long time, I do not have a lot of experience with Maxell's DVD-R (MXL RG04) media. It had a good reputation amongst those that used it. However, here in the US, the media was hard to get. For whatever reason, Maxell USA would outsource production to other companies instead of using their own discs. Most likely, this was due to cost. Needless to say, I was a little surprised (and excited) to see that Ritek's new media had this MID.

Ritek Pro DVD-R Info.PNG (36.48 KiB) Viewed 13002 times

[Ian]

Aside from price, the things people look look at most most when buying recordable media is longevity, compatibility, writing quality, and consistency. For example, if you're buying media rated at 16x, you want to be able to write at that speed with the drives you own. Also, you want your data to be readable now as well as long into the future.

Longevity of recordable media is something that's hard to evaluate. Without storing media for months, or even years, under different conditions, its hard to determine whether or not its a good medium for archiving data. In the past, the Library of Congress and the National Institute of Standards and Technology did comprehensive studies that looked at optical disc longevity, but I haven't seen a good one in at least a decade.

With this in mind, we're going to focus mostly on the compatibility, writing quality and consistency with the RITEK Pro DVD-R media:

Compatibility - Will the drive write to it at its rated speed (or better)?

Writing quality - Do the PI (Parity Inner), PIF (Parity Inner Fail) and Jitter rates stay within an acceptable range?

Consistency - Is the performance and writing quality consistent from one drive to another? Is it consistent from one batch to another? This also applies to the manufacturing of the discs itself as well as the printable surface.

The next issue to tackle here was to decide which drives to use. Instead of using a bunch of old drives, I decided to go with those that are currently available at retail. This meant that, aside from the LG BH16NS40, I ended up buying a number of new drives. All of them were manufactured within the last year or two and were equipped with the latest firmware available from the manufacturer.

Drives and firmware used:

LG BH16NS40 (1.03)
Lite-On iHAS124 F (CL9N)
Plextor PX-891SAF (1.JI)
LG GH24NSC0 (LY00)
Optiarc AD-5290S+ (1.RI)

I ended up dropping the Optiarc from the tests due to some issues it was having. As it is, the design is very similar to the Plextor so there was no real need to include it.

To do the write quality testing, I used the Lite-On iHAS124 and Opti Drive Control. I had thought about using the Plextor but the results between the two were very similar.

So what are "good" results supposed to look like? When testing with the iHAS124 and ODC, the PI errors should not exceed 280 and the number of PIF errors should stay below 4. Since POF errors are uncorrectable, we really don't want to see any of them at all.

As a baseline, I tested some DVD-R media from a few other manufacturers as well as Ritek's own F1 discs, which, as you can see below, are not that great.

Sony 16x DVD-R (SONY16D1):

Lite-On iHAS124 - Sony DVD-R Quality.png (192.39 KiB) Viewed 12892 times

Verbatim 16x DVD-R (MCC 03RG20):

Lite-On iHAS124 - Verbatim DVD-R Quality.png (202.61 KiB) Viewed 12892 times

Taiyo Yuden 16x DVD-R (TYG03):

Lite-On iHAS124 - Taiyo Yuden DVD-R Quality.png (191.94 KiB) Viewed 12890 times

RiDATA 16x DVD-R (RITEKF1):

Lite-On iHAS124 - Ritek F1 DVD-R Quality.png (208.23 KiB) Viewed 12892 times

[Ian]

Ritek's new RITEK Pro media worked quite well with the Lite-On iHAS124. While the drive wasn't able to write to it at 20x or 24x, it wrote to it at its rated speed (16x). The writing quality was also quite good across all of the discs I tested. Here are a few samples. The printable surface is noted below.

RITEK Pro (Silver):

Lite-On iHAS124 - Ritek Silver DVD-R Quality.png (211.74 KiB) Viewed 12892 times

RITEK Pro (Inkjet):

Lite-On iHAS124 - Ritek Inkjet DVD-R Quality.png (194.56 KiB) Viewed 12892 times

RITEK Pro (Thermal):

Lite-On iHAS124 - Ritek Thermal DVD-R Quality.png (209.76 KiB) Viewed 12892 times

RITEK Pro (Waterproof):

Lite-On iHAS124 - Ritek Waterproof DVD-R Quality.png (191.38 KiB) Viewed 12892 times

[Ian]

Ritek's new RITEK Pro media also worked quite well with the Plextor PX-891SAF. The drive wasn't able to write to it at 24x or 20x but the writing quality was again quite good across all of the discs I tested.

RITEK Pro (Silver):

Plextor PX-891SAF - Ritek Silver Quality.png (213.55 KiB) Viewed 12829 times

RITEK Pro (Inkjet):

Plextor PX-891SAF - Ritek Inkjet Quality.png (191.81 KiB) Viewed 12829 times

RITEK Pro (Thermal):

Plextor PX-891SAF - Ritek Thermal Quality.png (192.28 KiB) Viewed 12829 times

RITEK Pro (Waterproof):

Plextor PX-891SAF - Ritek Waterproof Quality.png (194.84 KiB) Viewed 12829 times

[Ian]

The LG BH16NS40 was the oldest drive in this test and the only Blu-ray Disc writer. Nevertheless, it had no problems writing to Ritek's new RITEK Pro DVD-R media and the writing quality was quite good across all of the discs I tested.

RITEK Pro (Silver):

LG BH16NS40 - Ritek Silver Quality.png (192.92 KiB) Viewed 12807 times

RITEK Pro (Inkjet):

LG BH16NS40 - Ritek Inkjet Quality.png (193.1 KiB) Viewed 12807 times

RITEK Pro (Thermal):

LG BH16NS40 - Ritek Thermal Quality.png (191.34 KiB) Viewed 12807 times

RITEK Pro (Waterproof):

LG BH16NS40 - Ritek Water Quality.png (190.99 KiB) Viewed 12807 times

[Ian]

Ritek's new RITEK Pro media didn't work quite as well with the LG GH24NSC0. As you can see below, there were two spots where the PI/PIF rates spiked. The jitter rate also got progressively higher across the entire disc.


RITEK Pro (Silver):

LG GH24NSC0 - Ritek Silver Quality.png (197.71 KiB) Viewed 12764 times

RITEK Pro (Inkjet):

LG GH24NSC0 - Ritek Inkjet Quality.png (216.78 KiB) Viewed 12764 times

RITEK Pro (Thermal):

LG GH24NSC0 - Ritek Thermal Quality.png (198.31 KiB) Viewed 12764 times

RITEK Pro (Waterproof):

LG GH24NSC0 - Ritek Waterproof Quality.png (197.12 KiB) Viewed 12764 times

Just so that there is no question if its an issue with the drive, here are the results with Sony's DVD-R media.

LG GH24NSC0 - Sony DVD-R Quality.png (191.4 KiB) Viewed 12764 times

[Ian]

Reserved

[Scour]

Big Thanks for these scans

I thought first you mean the Ritek Pro with TY-code so I´m surprised about it uses old Maxell-Codes

[Gen-An]

Big Thanks for these scans

I thought first you mean the Ritek Pro with TY-code so I´m surprised about it uses old Maxell-Codes

Ritek has been making media with Maxell codes for the Japanese market for some time actually. Nice to see it finally come this way, if not about 10 years too late for most people. I still intend to grab a spindle for testing.

[Scour]

Yep, it´s a bit late.

I have some old Maxell media made in Japan with MXLRG03 and MXLRG01, not sure whether Ritek also had a japanese plant.

Have also some Maxell 8x +R with RITEK-MID and 16x +R with Ricoh-MID, both sure made by Ritek. +R dL 8x was also Ritek, 2,4x have D01 can´t remember to see a DL with Maxell-Code

And some of my old Maxell have TYG01, newer 16x were made by Ritek, latest I get are awful MBI

So Maxell changed often what´s inside

[Gen-An]

The spindle I picked up from Fry's is RITEK F1 -_- I guess the RiData Pro is different from RITEK Pro.

[Scour]

Is it also Printable?

[Ian]

The spindle I picked up from Fry's is RITEK F1 -_- I guess the RiData Pro is different from RITEK Pro.

From what I've seen, these discs have the "RITEK PRO" packaging from my first post. Places like Newegg have them in stock. They even mention the MXL MID.

https://www.newegg.com/ritek-pro-4-7gb- ... 698BZ46955

[Gen-An]

I managed to get the real deal. First test looks great.

https://club.myce.com/t/maxell-dvd-r/70 ... wo_degrees

[Ian]

I managed to get the real deal. First test looks great.

https://club.myce.com/t/maxell-dvd-r/70 ... wo_degrees

Good to see some tests with the Pioneer. That was one drive I wanted to include in my tests but couldn't make it happen.

[Ian]

I learned today that Fry's will be getting Ritek's entire product line, including their 100GB BD-RE XL media.