Burnt discs ruin lasers MYTH

Why do people spread this myth that burnt discs are bad for the laser? It doesn't make any sense to me. My hand-me-down PS1 is older than I am and ever since it got modchipped in 1997 all it's ever done is play burnt CD's. And it wasn't just playing burnt CD's 20 years ago; it's been playing them THROUGHOUT THE YEARS.

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    cool anecdote m8

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Theres isnt exactly a scientific study being done on this. Both sides of the argument are being made as anecdotes.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        it is factual that burned discs have lower reflectivity than pressed discs, that disc drives have automatic power control to compensate for this, and that more power is bad for longevity of laser diodes

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          pressed discs? what is that?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            holy shit what an absolute fricking idiot

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Factory Discs have the data stamped into them with a master.

            Burned Discs have data created on a film layer and not stamped into the actual disc itself.

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              Ah, I didn't know that. Thank you.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                It's ok, this guy

                holy shit what an absolute fricking idiot

                didn't know it, either.

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              Everything happens at the film layer either way. Your words are garbage. Just post the link to the how its made video, instead of using your ignorance to gatekeep knowledge.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >disc drives have automatic power control to compensate for this
          No, the APC is to compensate for changes in power caused by changes in operating temp. That LM-317 will just make sure the diode is getting the same power it's supposed to, it doesn't turn up the juice if the disc doesn't read properly. The actual power setting is controlled by the pot. If you want to increase the actual power the diode is getting, you need to adjust the pot, which isn't recommended and will likely lead to the laser burning out quicker.

          Theres isnt exactly a scientific study being done on this. Both sides of the argument are being made as anecdotes.

          >anecdotes
          Who gives a shit about what morons are saying? Look at the actual science. CDROM drives can't tell the difference between pressed and burnt, and everyone trying to claim otherwise have never touched a IR laser calibration tool or looked at the issue any deeper than a google search. No study is needed, do you ever see scientists debating over the best speed to burn a disc at? Of course not, since the science is settled. Fastest speed the drive and disc will support.

          I think it's only a problem for Dreamcast. Since PlayStation discs are just CDs, Dreamcast used the GDROM which required a specialty Gigabyte disc and burning that data on 2x speed to a 700MB disc. Not sure if modern disc drives even do 2x anymore.

          What the frick are you on about? I can burn a disc at 52x speed and read it at 1x speed, I don't need to burn it at 1x speed. If I couldn't, then I wouldn't be able to burn mix CDs for my old early 90's CD players. They play 52x burnt CD-Rs just fine. It's just a burn speed, it has nothing to do with how data is placed on the disc.

          Buygay cope, simple as.
          There's no physical way for disks to be "bad for the laser"

          Oh good, someone with basic logic skills. I was starting to worry.

          The people in this thread are the reason this moronic myth keeps being passed around. Anyone claiming a burnt CD makes a CD-ROM laser work harder needs to post proof of someone taking readings with the proper equipment, not just "muh drive stopped workin so burnt discs bad!" Anyone believing this shit without seeing any actual scientific proof is a fricking moron.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        This

        it is factual that burned discs have lower reflectivity than pressed discs, that disc drives have automatic power control to compensate for this, and that more power is bad for longevity of laser diodes

        What a long way of saying "I don't know."

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I believe it depends on how the data is written, rather than "burnt discs".

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I think it's only a problem for Dreamcast. Since PlayStation discs are just CDs, Dreamcast used the GDROM which required a specialty Gigabyte disc and burning that data on 2x speed to a 700MB disc. Not sure if modern disc drives even do 2x anymore.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      It's theoretically a problem for any system where you don't properly dummy your discs.

      What REALLY killed a lot of dreamcasts was a

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        darn autopost

        What really killed a lot of dreamcasts was a release of an SNES emulator that would scan the ENTIRE DISC every time you started it or loaded a new rom. Nonstop back and forth reading for minutes on end. This wore the laser track out with the quickness.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      wasnt it with burned Dreamcast that compressed the data in a moronic way to the CD-R that meant it had to constantly seek to completely different sectors instead of a more consistent stream like youd get on a retail disc?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        problem was low quality plastic getting worn out on the rails, not the actual laser itself.

        >wasnt it with burned Dreamcast that compressed the data in a moronic way to the CD-R that meant it had to constantly seek to completely different sectors instead of a more consistent stream like youd get on a retail disc?
        gd-rom was very different than redbook cd while retaining some features. reading data from gd-rom discs was much faster than cd-r/rw etc.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Partly unrelated, but how the hell is there still not a solution to play PS1 games without emulation or burned CDs?
        Whether on PS1 or PS2, fat or slim, you're only options are burned discs (which don't work on PS2??? why??) or Popstarter, which is a worthless piece of shit.

        Yeah, that WAS a huge problem, around '99-2000.
        Since then it's just been a persistent myth, because all the rips available online should be properly organized to not cause that.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >how the hell is there still not a solution to play PS1 games without emulation or burned CDs?
          There is
          >which don't work on PS2
          Wrong

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Tonyhax and mechapwn can play burned PS1 games on a PS2.

            Ah ok, so I'm a year out of date, interesting. But those still require discs, no?
            I don't see from googling how "there is no a solution to play PS1 games without emulation or burned CDs" is incorrect, unless tonyhax or mechpwn have features I missed.

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              That's true, both of them require burning discs.
              An ISO loader for PS1 games on PS2 without emulation would be very hard to achieve because PS1 games run on bare metal and communicate with the disc drive controller directly.
              A demo was shown off for loading PS1 games from USB with DWKDRV recently. That's technically native but it takes advantage of the DECKARD virtualization hardware in the SCPH-7500x to 9000x models of PS2. These models have inferior compatibility due to the hardware changes and there is no public release yet.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Tonyhax and mechapwn can play burned PS1 games on a PS2.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        GD-ROM was a Constant Angular Velocity drive, common now but relatively new to consoles thing back then. This meant that data on the outside edge of the disc could be read faster than the inside and so it was both common and intended that devs structure the layout of their data so that commonly accessed data was all clustered in the high speed section and less common data towards the center. The problem was that people trying to take 1GB of data and cut bits out to make it fit on an 800MB CD-R lost all of this positional padding and since the whole file system was reprocessed files were stored alphabetically in a new table and not in the more efficient packing layout specified by the official tools.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      It's not a problem for the Dreamcast, that's nonsense. I've only every played burned discs on mine and have had it since Christmas of whatever year it came out, just burn discs and play games and enjoy. The failure point is the motor that moves the laser eye anyway (mine's also fine but whatever)

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Nah it can't be, I've been using burned discs on my Dreamcast for years and it works fine. Only had to adjust the laser's trim pot one time, and that was before I was burning CDs for it so that had to have been due to age alone. I'm burning Saturn games now too and I haven't had to adjust the laser on that at all since I got it a couple years ago.
      Hell, they run better than the real Saturn games that I do have since they're brand new CDs. My copy of Virtua Fighter 2 can't get past Stage 1 of Arcade Mode because there's a tiny, hairline crack in the corner of the surface layer, so I've been bussing hard with a burned copy of the game to play through it.

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    It's a matter of how hard the laser has to work to read the data. No disc is perfect so the laser is designed to track the data. Forcing it to work harder than it needs to for long enough will put more wear and tear on the assembly. I don't know if burned discs do in fact cause this though.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      You're spot on, but the main the cause of laser wear is bad rips of games that don't efficiently arrange the data. Generally, disc quality just determines if a particular console can read them or not, with no in between. It is a digital format, after all. The only thing that's analog is the physical pattern a laser when it burns an image onto a disc. Like you said, there's always going to be some amount of error, which is why burning at lower speeds is considered better. You're sacrificing some time for better (but unusually unnoticeable) results.

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Because the 90s cheap discs most people used were absolute garbage

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >it didnt happen to me so its a myth
    Okay moron.
    I haven't gotten lung cancer from smoking, thats a myth, stop spreading this shit.

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Why lying when we can see the flat ribbon cable that is an Laser pickup adapter ?
    Laser unit was replaced by different one from original, Sony modified them for each major console revision.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Not my pic, just showing a PS1 laser from Google inages

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I have burnt CDs and DVDs using the Verbatim ones and at the lowest speed. They're perfectly readable even after 20 years.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Yeah this unhygienic copy of Pro skater 2 is on a verbatim disc. I think I'm JUST older than this disc. The laser's had plenty of appointments with this motherfricker.

      What the frick even is all this gunk, none of the other discs from the time have this shit on it haha

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Xmen here isn't covered in shit

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Xmen here isn't covered in shit

        I had an xbox 3shitty, had it chipped so it can run backups or burnt discs if you want to call it that, the dvd drive dieded after 6 months of hardcore use (im talking around 8-10 hours daily), how ever mexicans use the most shittiest, crapiest, cheapest dvds and/or cds they can get their dirty beaner hands on... im talking about dvds that where like around 50 cents each, cds where like a quarter... not to mention how they take care of them (protip: they dont keep em in cases or at least in a nice comfy place where it wont catch shit and wont get scratched).

        All my consoles where chipped and the same goes for all my 15ish mexican beaner moronic friends, I had a ps1, 1st xbox, and 2 xboxes the 3shitty version, both had issues with the dvd drive but im not sure if it was do to piracy or do to shitty ass macroshat quality, never saw a ps1, ps2, gamecube, psp, xbox or any other console have dvd drive failure, most the ones that did where all more bannged than bangbros.com and where all dirty.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Depends on the drive, the earlier ones were notoriously bad

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            that would explain why, i think mine was a first gen, it was very hard to sell, everyone in mexico was poor.

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    because underage homosexuals frequent this board post-rule change and it sucks now

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >Why do people spread this myth that burnt discs are bad for the laser?
    Because most of this board is nothing but moronic zoomers.

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Because there are scenarios where it can hurt the laser or the laser assembly. It's not a myth.
    However, it is overstated and if you burn your discs correctly there is nothing to worry about.

  12. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    burnt disks are harder for the laser to read.
    I used to use PS2 swap magic and burned Dreamcast games and you can tell the systems have to work harder to read burned games.
    it was cool to play out of region games at the time but with emulation and hdd/sd solutions now there's no point

  13. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I heard scratched discs would ruin the laser. I had a friend who would refuse to put rented movies and games in his consoles because of this. probably has a point since reading scratched disks would make the laser work harder too

  14. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Buygay cope, simple as.
    There's no physical way for disks to be "bad for the laser"

  15. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    When i was a teen, i believed it, but i didnt give a shit, a replacement lens was still a better deal than than all the games that i would have to buy if not burned.

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