Hi-Val blank CD-R's not Mac compatible

[Mr645]

I e-mailed them to bitch about 25 Hi-Val blanks that I burned in June of 1999, none could be read. Kodak and Verbatim blanks from the same time, stored in the same case read fine.

I wrote.
Back in 1999 I bought 50 Hi-Val CDR blanks. I tried to read from a few of them recently and they simply come up as unrecognizable volumes. I have tried them in a DVD-R drive, a CDRW drive and a CDRW/DVD combo drive. Is there an hope of reading the data on these disks? I also tried Verbatim and Kodak CDR's that were written in 1998, stored in the same case and those read without errors.

Their first reply was:
-This error comes up when there is a blank CD-R or CD-RW disk in the drive. This is normal. Windows can not see a blank disk when trying to access the blank though a explorer or my computer. You'll need to open the burning software that comes with the drive and then follow the steps to burn. After you have burned on to the CD then you will be able to access the drive.

I replied:
It seems that you miss understood the problem. The disks were burned in 1999, 6/19/99 and were burned on a Mac with Toast software. I was reviewing some old documents that were stored on CDR from that time period and I found that Kodak and Verbatim blanks around the same time period and those read fine. But the dozen or so Hi-Val CDR’s I tried to read cannot be read.


Their reply:
We do not provide any support for Mac. There have been instances in which people have gotten it to work on a Mac and there have been instances in which people have not been able to so it all really depends, but we do not provide support for getting it to work on a Mac

Thank You
Jon Laye

[incognegro]

i am immediately suspect of a brand with a name like "Hi-Val."

thanks for the report.

[Zoidberg]

You need to send that to a couple of Mac magazines, and MacFixIt.

[Jimmypoo]

I thought that company went under after all the Office Max negative rebates they were offering.

[S.Taylor]

They're not saying their cd-r's are not compatible, they're saying they won't support it.

And what they're thinking is "thank god we have a good excuse for not dealing with those bad cd's".

[Joey Cupcakes]

That does not mean they are "mac incompatible." It does mean they are sonsa bitches who sell an inferior product.

[Racer X]

HiVal just bought and rebranded stuff and put their name on it. I have an old HiVal 2x SCSI burner at work. It has a Mitsubishi mechanism in the external case. I had some HiVal CD-RW blanks go bad in less than 6 months. This was crap IT bought at the local CompUSA because they were too lazy to get what i asked for.

Chalk it up to experience. You tried what you could to read them, and you can't.