BD-R Burn Speed versus Reliability???

[JK43232]

Hello all,

I am new to this forum and did quite a bit of searching and found some info but not quite what I need to know....

I am about to take the plunge and purchase and external Blu-Ray burner for archiving data and will likely dabble a bit in authoring Blu-Ray video.

I have read the arguments for and against using optical media versus HDD for archiving and actually want to make use of both methods.

My big question is two-fold. (Actually three-fold)

ONE:
Is advisable to burn BD-Rs at a burn speed lower than the rated speed of the blank media to get a more reliable disc, short-term and long-term In other words, should I expect to get a more reliable burn and longer readable life for a disk if I burn a 4x BD-R at 2x???

TWO:
If I am using Toast Titanium Pro 10 to burn the BD-Rs and it verifies the BD-R after burning, (regardless of the burn speed used...), should I be confident that the data is readable in the long term and therefore continue burn at the rated speed of the BD-R media rather than slower speed??

THREE:
Is there any point in purchasing a 12x burner like the Pioneer BDR-205 12x SATA Blu-ray Recordable Drive rather than 8x Pioneer drive when current BD-Rs seem to top out at 4x??? (I am thinking that by the time blank BD-Rs rated at 12x appear it may be time to buy and new drive anyway???)

Any other suggestions on things to consider would be appreciated.

I have 2.66Mhz MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM and I am looking at one of the OWC external drives at the moment.

Thanks

John