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Say Goodbye To Your CD-Rs In Two Years?

Posted by timothy on from the mine-mostly-still-work dept.

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."

2 of 607 comments (clear)

  1. CD = Inferior Storage Technology by Arbogast_II · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The CD is an inferior storage technology that has propagated due to 3 reasons IMO.

    1. For the average person, a file is in some way less real if it is on a hard drive, and more real if it is on a CD, where it is a physical object they can touch.
    2. Familiarity with CD's due to long term use on music CDs.
    3. Vastly superior marketing to hard drives.

    Removable hard drive bays should be standard on all PC's. Once you are used to these, the Hard Drive is just a Cartidge to plug into the PC. Data is easily backed up, and a Hard Drive in closet is safe.

    Hard drives are faster, take up less space, and are very cost competative with CD's. I am unclear why CD's are popular with the tech savvy crowd. It's an inferior storage technology.

    --


    HenryJamesFeltus.com
  2. Re:but something is missing... by FirstOne · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "But something is missing, The speed in which the CDR is burned sometimes it makes a difference, for the highest reliability I think 1x is the best."

    I agree.. Slower recording speeds will usually improve the contrast ratio of the resulting recording.
    One can confirm this by making several cd-r's writing at different speeds using the same type of media, and then visually comparing the cd-r's data surfaces, (For recorded areas, Darker is better).

    A fair number of CD recording programs DO NOT have a VERIFY cd-r contents option after a burning, and is a major pain in the ass. This problem got me good when I used some 12x Office Depot media for saving some TV show mpegs. Bad move,
    I found out months later, that 50% of initial recordings had one or more non recoverable bad spots. :-(

    Nero is the only mastering program I know of, which will verify cd-r contents after burning :-),
    But it doesn't do it for all recording formats :-( .