I bought a pack of 10 Verbatim discs from Newegg last month and made 10 working backup copies of my games. They worked at first and still work today fine.

However, I just got a 20 pack in the mail from Shop4Tech.com (same brand, speed, everything) and I think it may be a bad batch, but I'm not quite sure.

I've made 3 backups from these new discs and they all seem to give me problems. One game loads fine but will occasionally give me a 'Disc Unreadable' error or just lockup after an hour or two of playing. The other two will only load about 10% of the time, and when they do it usually gives a disc error immediately.

Does this sound like a bad batch to you guys? The computer I've been using to burn it has had no changes made to it...everything is the same. Any input?

It is possible, but uncommon. I had a bad batch of Verbatim DVD+R's before. There wasn't enough of the liquid that they put imbetween the two discs holding them together, so the two halves would easily seperate. Visually there was no excess liquid along the seems like you would normally see.

The easiest way for you to find out would be to burn the same game from the same image using the new media, then do a PIF test on both discs (using something like Nero CD-DVD Speed - Disc Quality check, or other apps). If the fresh media has marginally more errors than the old used media, then something is wrong. It could be caused by bad media or from other apps taking up cpu/memory useage while the disc is trying to burn (helps if you remove some things from the systray and set the burning app to high priority).

I had a simular problem, if you notice Verbatim has changed there DVD`s. I wrote them and they changed them to increase burning speeds. You can try burning at 8 or better. I may help, it did not fro me, went to another supplier SONY.

@cobraxt you may be on to something there. The only defective D/L disc that I have ever had was from the one spindle that I ordered from shop4tech (several of the others in the spindle didn't scan well either). It could be that shop4tech gets their discs from questionable sources, older stock, ect. Then again it could just all be coincidence. Who knows. All I know is that I haven't had any such luck with the several spindles of 20 that I have ordered from newegg or purchased from BB.

Shop4tech are a bunch of scumbags.

Back in the day when I bought quality (Taiyo Yuden) CDs, I ordered a spindle of 100 unbranded discs. My first few burns were fine, then I noticed I started having problems.

Upon further investigation, I found that the top ten or so discs were Taiyo Yudens, and the rest of the spindle was some generic crap. I wrote a nasty letter and they replaced them, but I never ordered from Shop4tech again.

I would not be surprised if you've got counterfeit Verbatims. Run a test with DVD Identify and verify the manufacturer and dye type.

Mine definitely were Verbatims they had the Verbatim labeling and were listed as made in Singapore and showed up as MKM001. As mentioned though it could be some other factors (ie poor storage facilities, old stock , ect.) Keep in mind that media doesn't last nearly as long when it is unburned and it tends to be more sensitive to the elements.