MD Discs Die After How Many Uses?

[Chris Chapman]

Anybody else have a good estimate on how long Mini-Discs can be written, erased, and re-written. I have some old discs that are throwing errors on recording. The unit is a TASCAM MD-350, and it is 100% reliable on playback. I think it's old media that is nailing me.

Any thoughts?

(And do not even begin to rag on MiniDisc units. Still more flexible than CD-R's.)

-Chris Chapman
TD, GPAC

 

[icewolf08]

Sony says that it's MD media is good for multiple thousands of record/erase cycles. Wikipedia says that MDs are good for one million of cycles. Have you tried using a head cleaning cartridge? Are the discs dusty?

 

[Footer]

I have found that usually around a 100 or so, depending. From what I can recall (its been awhile since i have used MD) that when a MD went south, it went south very hard and very quickly.

 

[Chris Chapman]

The discs don't seem to be dusty, but I do know that they are pretty old. Time to try to invest in some new media.

**** budget cuts.... grumble grumble mutiny mutiny...

 

[BenFranske]

Just a thought but you might invest in a new recording system instead (for example something compact flash based) as the quality will be better and the media easier to find. The recorders have come down to a reasonable price and I can get 1GB flash cards locally for $10 now.

 

[Chris Chapman]

Yeah I know. I'm starting to look at an All Digital setup with a ProTools Rig and a good playback engine. Again, budget cuts sometimes define the hardware.

-Chris

 

[wolf825]

MD's are very re-writable...however the problem most run into I have found is that they are not completely erasing the discs before re-recording over them--instead folks simply erase the tracks they do not want or add new ones to the end or overwrite.. Do this enough times without a complete wipe--and the TOC then can become jumbled in info--the TOC is the list of contents the MD uses to read the info... Whenever I have run into problems I simply erase the entire disc and start over and usually I have no more problems.... Thats my experience with MD's and problems--dunno if it helps but figured I would share...

-w

 

[BenFranske]

You need not spend lots of money and go "all digital" to reap the rewards of switching to a compact flash based recording method. For $400 you can get a compact flash recorder and as I mentioned above the media is quite inexpensive. As a bonus the quality will be better than the MD and it is extremely easy to transfer it digitally to a PC for editing, dumping to a CD or whatnot. If you need to locate and find say 10 new MDs you might be better off to relace the system with something a bit more modern for just a little bit more. Just some thoughts.