Does it seem like you are not getting full speed capability when you burn a disk on your DVD drive? Or somewhere half way through a burn the burn dies? The first thing you may think of is that your drive is going bad, but you may want to reconsider that thought. Media quality makes a big difference in how fast your dvds and cds burn and whether they actually finish the burn. Taiyo Yuden is one of the best media manufacturers on the planet. I have noticed a consistent faster completion burn time and better media burn characteristics of the completed disc. You can only tell of the media manufacturer by obtaining the mfg id that is stored on the disk by using several free programs on the internet. Plextor makes a tool called Plextools and it comes free with every Plextor drive I sell at RB TECH DEALS . It enables you to determined the mfg id by just running the application sticking the disc in the drive, choosing the drive  and reading the result. Do not judge the quality of your media by the manufacturers BRAND. That will usually tell you nothing as they buy their media from different manufacturing plants and stick their brand name on it. For the best and fastest burns stick with Taiyo  Yuden manufactured media.