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Say Goodbye To Your CD-Rs In Two Years?
Little Hamster writes "According to an article on cdfreaks.com, a test done by the Dutch PC-Active magazine showed that among 30 different CD-R brands tested, a lot of them were already unreadable after twenty months. This is shocking, and makes me wonder how should I backup my data, photo and music collection."
I tend to keep a lot of my recorded CDs on the floor of my car, rolling around loos.
Is that not an optimal storage space?
..........FULL STOP.
Damn, your're right!
Does DVD-R last longer? Let's see, I'll need about 200 blank DVDs...
You mean you don't back up your porn to your $5,000 autoloading Exabyte SCSI tape drive?
Good idea. Not being a chemical expert, I visited an industry leader to gain a chemical enginnering degree and learn about the latest in organic dye technology. E2 taught me Quantum mechanics so another prevention method is now obvious.
Take a burned disk and a blank one and rub the 2 together. Rub vigerously, we need to entagle a good number of them 'purty quantums. Now re-burn the same stuff onto the blank disc as the written one. Easy eh?
Try to ensure you use the same image and burner otherwise you'll get a ghosting effect of the data and you'll have to re-orientate your antenna.
Rather than snippets, here is a reliable translation of the entire article.
"
CD - R garbage (September issue)
Tuesday 19 August 2003
CD-R unreadable within two years
Random sampling provides worrying results
Jeroen Horlings
Imprtant data on a cd-r are in practice not always easy to keep. From our practical test, published in the September issue of PC-Active, it appears that data on a cd-r may become unreadable within two years. It is very likely that by using certain cd-r brands important personal information may be lost.
As you probably know, as a reader of PC-active, we tested quite a few cd-r in 2001 and we then published the results. It appeared then that new cd-r sometimes did not conform to standard quality requirements. We kept the thirty different branded cd-r which we tested in a locked cupboard. Before this article we tested these cd-r again with a professional cd-r analyser which watches to an extreme precision what is the current condition of the cd-r.
On this image you see exactly the same cd-r. On the left you see the result of the test in 2001, on the right the same cd-r in 2003. Colors express the seriousness of the error in the order of white, green, yellow and red. This represents easily readable (white) and unreadable (red).
From the test it appears that a number of cd-r had become completely unreadable and that with other cd-r the data had become partially unreadable. Data which had been put onto the cd-r twenty months ago had become unreadable. These were c-dr of both known and less known manufacturers.
It is assumed in general that cd-r at least remain usable for ten years. Some manufacturers claim even a usability of a century. From our sample testing it seems that there is lot of garbage on the market. We have found cd-r which should have never been placed on the market. These came possibly from unreliable suppliers. It is unacceptable that cd-r content has become, within about two years, totally unusable.
In the September issue of PC-Active, available on 22 August, the shocking results are described in detail. Besides the possible reasons for the data loss with passing of time we provide also a number of useful recommendations to preserve data on a writable cd. On the free cd-rom there is also a program allowing to assess the status of a cd-r.
[ i ] PC-Active September 2003
(available from 22 August)
EUR 6,99 (including free cd-rom)"
I am afraid I don't find this exactly mind-boggling. Perhaps over here in Europe we are more critical of stupid manufacturers' claims...
Thufir Hawat
Part-time Mentat
That's what I tried telling those RIAA bastards but they won't believe me. Putting my CD backups on Kazaa was simply the safest backup investment I could've ever made. Then they came along and labelled me a pirate! A pirate!? I'm just trying to backup my valuable data! Where better than in a distributed format strewn all across the Internet? Even if the entire United States were to blow up I could still retrieve my data from China! Please RIAA, think of the backups.
Is it just me, or does this floopies/beeb thing sound distinctly pornographic?
experimental audiovideo minimalism: Rebuild All Your Ruins
Remember, don't leave your CDs in the car for more than about a fortnight, or they will metamorphose into 'Best of Queen' albums.
Priorities, my man, priorities!
Why does every porn joke get instantly rated "5, Funny"?
I'd explain, but it takes too long given that I'm typing one-handed.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
True story:
I had a 1541 that wouldn't stay aligned for more than a couple of hours. One day, I smacked the drive in pure frustration while it was gronking away - and the sonofabitch loaded.
From that time forward, SOP for loading any C=64 program was:
1) load *,8,1 [enter]
2) watch drive light come on
3) swat drive
4) PROFIT!!!!
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Are you a VF grad? Check out the VFMA Alumni Forums VFMA Alumni Forum
I restore my files by reading it back from /dev/random. Takes a while, but every file i've ever had is in there.
Sorry paper rots over time, and there is always danger of a fire. The ultimate backup is cuneiform on clay tablets. They remain readable after thousands of years.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Using Grease to seal a CD-R?
You mean encoding selections from the 1978 John Travolta and Olivia Newton John movie on the outter tracks of the disc? Brilliant! Even O2 won't react with John Travolta.
As far as removing Grease, the Church of Scientology can remove anything it wants. Its the perfec solution!
Troll Like a Champion Today
I have my filters set up to give a -5 to all posts, and I browse at 3+. I can read all the comments on a dozen articles in less than a minute now.
What's really strange is that ever since I excluded all of the articles from the front page, slashdot doesn't seem to ever update anymore.
Needless to say, my productivity has gone through the roof.
this is a sig.
I read that burning cd's while wearing a tinfoil hat decreases chances of errors.....
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
Yah but is it redheads or blonds?