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CD-R Lifespan - Is It The Label?
sysadmn writes "Slashdot has discussed archival lifespan of CD-R media before. Fred Langa revisits the issue with a new twist: Are glue-on labels causing premature failure? Much more common than rain forest fungus! From Fred's informative LangaList newsletter."
...but I've stopped doing that. For one thing, humidity causes the clue to come off, leaving you with a bubbly cd that doesn't fit in many slot cd players (esp. car players). Dragging the label off at this point will damage the cd.
What kind of protection do normal music CDs have to avoid this kind of rapid degradation? Is there any?
I haven't personally had any CD-Rs go bad on me, but I know a few people who have old CD-Rs that are unreadable in current devices. We chalked that up to a difference in formats, but it may have been this problem.
What is an acceptable digital archival media?
To demonstrate the durability of CD-R media, my ex-roommate once licked the active side. I hope neither the dye nor the plastic is toxic. But since I was always suspicious my roomie may have had a few screws loose, that may not matter too much.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
At first I thought labels were dumb. Who would put a label on em when a sharpie works just fine? After having several of my burned CDs get scratched on the foil side and stop working, I reconsidered. Of course for archival purposes, this concern isn't as pertinent. You ought to have somewhere safe to put them if you are serious about making sure your backups function and so Labels aren't really necessary unless your handwriting with a sharpie is so atrocious that you can't tell what you wrote when you need the backuped data.
wow, my very own sig!
A co-worker turned me on to Fred's column a couple of days ago, and I've been running a few tests that may or may not have a bearing on reality...
The cheap-ass CompUSSR CD-R with and without their corporate logo were the main object of testing.
In a nutshell, the pre-printed logo CD-R survived the label removal much better than the generic no-name blank did, though you _could_ screw up the printed one just as badly with a little effort.
We're going to get everyone in the office to offer up a sacrificial CD-R of choice to conduct more tests, and I will also introduce my co-workers to the Round Table Rate-A-Record system with the office microwave...
Then we'll see what happens to DVD-R/+R...
"Eustace? Eustace? Are you there? Are you there?" = John Leeming
Some disk are so cheaply made the only thing preventing them from being damaged is the paper labels that I stick on top. I guess I will have to buy better quality CDRs.
I upgraded (if you call it that) from a plextor 16x to a sony 52x (really 48x). Compusa had 52x Sony media on sale for 30 bux for 100, figured it was a good deal, and would burn well on the Sony drive. Worst media I ever had, 48/32/16 burns would create coasters, and the media also would fail at 16x on the plextor. The media Did work at 4x-1x, so I used 4x and tossed about 40 bad ones in the garbage.
I also noticed the CD's had a static on them, when stacked, they would stick to each other, not a good coating on them either, and Memorex 48x that I bought was a little thicker, did not have any static on them. Seemed more like pressed CD's.
Not very techinical, I just know that the Sony brand was not top quality, and it felt cheap. So I wouldnt be surprised that some media dies after awhile due to air, etc. And slower burning did work on the media, so I guess burning at 1x on junk media would make it last longer, but who knows how much longer that is.
I just wish there was some technical reviews on media, thickness, quality of materials, burn speed test, tested with multiple media. Now I'm having the same problem with DVDR's, they are now 99 bux for a 4x drive, and half the media I buy only burns at 1x.
Bulk Media for DVDR's seems to also offer the "cheapness" now. I just wish there was standards, or some way of know my data was safe, other than making copies every 2 years. And trying to save a buck per disk doesnt seem to be helping the quality I purchase.
Of the CDs I own, the ones that've gone bad have suffered damage to the top foil part. It either rubs off, or partially becomes dislodged from the bottom part. All the review sites seem to think the dye is the weak link in the chain, but in my experience a crapy foil will go long before the dye.
AccountKiller
I've bought many brands of CDR's over the years from Sony, Pioneer, TDK, Mitsui, Kodaks, Laser and all have worked fine for me.
TDK gets somebody else to makes their discs and I've gone through a few different TDK-branded disc coming from differenet factories and I haven't had a reliabilty problem with any of them. Mitsui and Kodak golds are my favourties but they're hard to find now. Lasers are cheap and havent had any problems using them. I had some issues with Imation discs, the label side developed a yellow tint before becoming unreadable soon afterwards.
I've had lots of problems with no name brands. CRC errors galore after a few months despite me keeping them out of the sunlight (or room light) in the filing cabinet along with all my other CDRs.
Most of my coasters are from burn failures due to my fault, buffer underruns when I had my old computer, and the dye disapearing. I've never had a problem from scratched cdrs or the label side peeling off but then my use of cdrs is usually to burn them to disc and then stuffing them into my filing cabinet until I need to reghost my HD.
I used to buy cheap bulk no-name CDs. However, about 1 year later, the aluminum coating was flaky and fell out of the CD... So, when you can see the light through the hole from the fell-out coating... So, the CD breaks.
In this case, coating it would have helped. I dunno whether it would end up the same way as stated in the article, though.
But, if you can spend more money on CD-Rs, you'd be better up with branded CD-Rs and apply no labels.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
here is an easy solution that has worked for me for years. 1. get a perm. marker 2. label your cd-r "applications cd1" or "music cd1" 3. make a text file(html format works the best) list contents of each cd-r 4. done simple as that no wasted time trying to make labels.
All media degrades. The trick is to use redundant data, and re-copy it before the media is expected to fail.
Is there a way to detect when a CD is about to fail? The CD drive will auto-correct minor errors without informing the PC - so by the time a drive returns an error code, at least one block of data is lost (if you're lucky, you can copy everything else off the CD).
I'm aware of commercial testing hardware that can report statistics like the Bit Error Rate (BER), Block Error Rate (BLER), etc. But is there any way to do this cheaply, possibly using software?
If I recall, the original story about the defective discs was from Europe. At the time I was concerned and I found a bundle that had been sitting by a window in a clear case for several years. Kinda fell back there and I forogt about them. They even appeared to have some damage around the edges from the sunlight. But surprisingly I was able to read every one of them and they were dirt cheap gererics from years ago.
Since then I've gone through randomly looking for bad disks through the years and I've found a couple that were screwed up, but very few.
At the time of the first story I was wondering if they might not perhaps have been hoping to stir up some DVD-R sales. I was contemplating getting one to back up all my CDs just in case I found they were deteriorating, but so far they seem fine and I think I'll wait to see if those dual layer media ever become affordable next year.
I have noticed that on some of my CDR's, burning slower results in a different color than a faster burn. I guess the dye is being changed more when it is slower. So now, for CD's that I want to keep for a few years, I write them at 4x even though I have a 48x burner. As for the labels, I don't use them.
I once had nearly an entire 25 pack of Memorex CDRW's that were crap right out of the store. I burned 10 goddamned coasters before I realized it wasn't Nero or the burner.
They were so bad they locked up Windows in 3 different machines when I put them in the drives after burning something to them. Eventually I had to toss every one of them and reburn that data on Imation discs.
As for labeling, I use a Sharpie and am very careful to write lightly.
Only on
... is the major reason for my failed CDs.
I've only used brand name CD-Rs, my all time favourites are Kodak Golds. Unfortunately they're not making them anymore, because the process was far more expensive than the regular blue or green dye one. But with the Golds I never had a coaster, and all the ones I kept since 4 years ago still work. Other brands I had luck with were Maxwells and TDKs, but they don't look as nice as the Kodaks.
I also keep them protected in some way, either in sleeves, jewel cases or spindles.
The only CDs that ever failed were Hi-Vals. They were the first spindle I ever bought, and even out of those, only one died completely. The paint just peeled off the CD, and it became unreadable. But that CD saw a lot of abuse, sitting in my car for 3 years through very hot, humid summers and frigid winters in Toronto.
Overall, I agree with the article, a bit of prevention will preserve CDs for a long time, probably untill the data on them has become useless.
Considering how cheap hard drives are now (about $100 for a 150G disk) it's better to buy multiple hard disks to back things up.
I've decided that if I want to back up my important media for my business, I am going to make a storage machine. Basically it will be a low end machine with a fast network connection and a lot of hard disk space. Each night when I want to back things up I'll send all the files over to the backup machine. To be extra safe I would double the drives in the machine and setup a chron job to copy files from one disk to the other and mirror the drives. That way if one physical disk fails, the files are backed up on another. Also, I'd give it a wireless connection and put it on a very well surge protected power strip. That way lightening is less likely to get to it. Yes, call me paranoid, but I've lost so much data due to media failure that I don't take the risk anymore.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Part of an email from a friend who is on a small boat somewhere in PNG:
Among other adventures, the boat was broken into while I was alone on
board. Not much stolen, but my MP3 collection was immersed in sea water
before being recovered and I was most disappointed to find that many of
the CDs didn't like the experience. It looks like water got in between
the layers of laminate and dissolved the ink. TDK CDs were the worst.
Now you know.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Sharpie... the 'perfect' cd labeling system
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
We need to worry. REALLY. I am burning a cd right now. The data is music. Music from about 25 years ago that was on a reel to reel (older tape analogue) that had to be baked (put in an oven to recover the lost footage more here: http://www.soundsaver.com/squealingtape.htm)
If I am burning this to CD and then the CD becomes faulty, which is likely from my experience, the CD becomes useless, there is no turning back. This has happened to me, a skip becomes more and more of a skip until unplayable.
CD's are not a good way to archive anything.
Given the state of DVD-Rs, backing up CDs to DVDs is foolish. Unless you have performed extensive compatibility tests with drive and media, you should expect your DVD-Rs to have significant BLERs, in some cases higher than the maximum spec, and that is right after you burn them, not a few years down the road. CD-Rs are still cheaper per MB than DVD-Rs, so if you already have your data in CD-sized chunks, back them up to CD, not DVD.
1. The effect of the type of CD's is (slightly) overrated. We are told how the "golden-base" are superior to "silver-base" are superior to "green-base" CDs. True. But so far I have observed little difference between these, certaly not as large as advertised. I still use golden based for my work, though....
2. The biggest difference, instead, comes between the manufacturers. I now avoid Hewlett Packard like black plague. Other manufacturers quality seems to vary, but not as bad as HP.
3. Proper storage, that is, air conditioned(de-humified), dark, clean rooms is important.
Anyone who's ever burned with cdrecord has had a chance to see the info gathered about the media, grading it in terms such as "low beta category" or "high beta category", and displaying what the magic ingredient in the disc is, such as "phenylalanine" (I think), "phtalycyanine or similar", and "azo" something for those expensive super AZO CDs from Verbatim.
Surely, this, too, must have an impact on how long the CD lasts? I remember using some cheap mmore CDs to burn some data, and after a few months, there was actually a hole in the data layer on the disc that I could see. I think the only thing I'd used on that CD was some sort of fluorescent marker.
My Verbatim (Super AZO) CDs are still holding up, though. Let's see for how long.
Fuji is advertising 70-100 years.
What about my sharpie? Is it actually acidic and going to eat a "Nasty Pr0n 3 of 17" imprint through my disc? That would suck. We're probably going to end up preserving CD-Rs naked (labelless) in little labeled air-tight jars like lab specimen.
Memorex is consistently one of the worst CD and DVD manufacturers around. They usually have 1-2 bad discs in a 10pack. One 10pack I bought actually had 6 bad cd's. I can't remember the link to a good CD evaluation site, but here's one for DVD's:
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdmedia
That cunt! Hasn't she been walking around your apartment topless for like three weeks solid now? Tell her to get over here and drink my kids. Time a new troll, dickhead!
what an excellent article, it's not so common that i see an article that's even half as useful.
I learnt that from now i'll be using markers and even buy one of those special CD markers, writing on the hub rather than where the ink might migrate across and damage the dye...
what's so great is that this is an article and slashdot discussion that tells you that you don't need to buy an expensive fast cd rewriter or a label maker... which i had in my shopping list
now... in practical terms... i use those samsung premium cd-r80... are they any good... and what brands are recommended for longevity considering that i don't get a chance to open up and look at the color inside, and even if i did i'm not sure i'd know 'cos most cds i looked at have all the colors of the spectrum and those described in the article seem all any way just diferent shades of blue..
Time a new troll? But that is perfect at 3 mins long!
learn hw to tpe,,, dkwad.
I use a lot of CD-Rs for archival purposes for music on my label, LOCA records, and my experience is that stick-on labels definitely reduce the lifespan. The CD's tend to develop a noticable click when they are played in CD-players and it becomes increasingly worse as time goes by.
Conversely since I have begun using a CD pen, although it does not look as good professionally, the CD's don't seem to be developing the same fault. Now whether this is due to the fact that the CD's have come from a different manufactuer with a more recent technology - though the older ones are also from a variety of manufacturers - I don't know.
So my advice is to steer clear of CD labels and stick to pens or stamps (which is also what we use on the label now) as these do not seem to cause the same problems.
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
but i have learnt a few things!
- don't let cdrs touch each other ever. they *will* scratch each others data off. never put written cdrs on spindels or two to a slot in a case. i was too cheap to buy another case and immediately b*gg*r*d some of my discs stickin em two to a slot w/ a grain of sand in between!
- if you have to put a cd down not in a case, put it play side down. i've seen people put them label suide down thinking its 'protecting the disc' - worst thing you can do. a scratch on the plastic side ain't so serious, you could maybe polish it out in a pinch
- overprints are good, if you can get them. these are discs where the original label was printed wrong and has been.. overprinted. = cheaper AND tougher in my experience :)
- writing on a disc with soft tip permanent marker (you dont have to buy "cd markers", thats a joke) has never caused me a problem. i think labels are asking for trouble, but ive always been too cheap to try them :p don't use a hard tipped thing eh in case anyone is stupid to try a biro or sommat
- some cds are just sh*t and fall apart no matter what you do! if data is really vital i'd get two stacks of diff. makes of media and burn two sets (of course, im never sensible enough to do this)
- use the verify funtion of your cdr app if you're not in a hurry. then you know at least the disc started out alright.
there's probably loads more things i'll think of after posting this eh.
the biggest problem i have is with some cds developing mysterious "spots". there is a little speck with a discoloured ring around it, that can fall off, but even if it doesnt the disc is ruined. anyone have any idea what it might be that's touching my discs and doing this to them? i'd love to know, 'cos im stumped. id post a picture of one of these if i was somewhere with a scanner.
oh yeah, did i mention i was cheap! :p maybe buying more expensive blanks would help some of my problems, but i suspect you don't get what you pay for necessarily.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
I have noticed this before, and it is the very reason I stopped labeling my CD-R's with fancy labels. It makes sense too. The material properties of a label _must_ be completely different from the properties of the CD's data-layer and polycarbonate substrate. Just imagine the data-layer stuk between plastic and paper, which shrink and expand in different ways as the temperature and humidity change. Specifically, if the plastic substrate shrinks less than the paper label, the data-layer will be quite literally ripped apart. Not good for the readability of the CD.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
Has anyone had any experience with recovering CD's that were once thought to be dead? Maybe it's as simple as increasing the contrast between the 0's and the 1's so the laser can better detect them (I mean persumably a faster write speed can't spend a lot of time on each bit so the pits aren't so well formed, therefore less contrast). I don't know how this can be done as I don't have a chemistry background but maybe with exposure to a special kind of light. Or maybe using a more sensitive cd reader could read decaying CD's.
It would be good to know that there are solutions for those situations when you really really need data on a CD's that can't be read anymore.
Anyone out there work for a data recovery company that can share with us some info?
One thing that just popped into my mind. Since we're on the issue of labelling: disk cataloguing software would work great in this situation. Serial number a CD, or just read the serial number that's preprinted on it, and catalogue the contents on your harddisk (you can periodically burn a catalogue CD of all the CD's you have burnt). This would be a great way to look for data you need: quick computer search to find what you need, get the CD number, locate it in your library (which should preferably be sorted in some kind of alphabetical order). That way you wouldn't even have to label your CDs at all!
Does anyone have any experience with decent disk cataloguing software?
There is a slight problem with that. Hard drives are not very portable. The main reason people use CDs is the portability.
The penguin has a slight problem with CDs and HDs in general - you have to mount them manually(unless you use some desktop environment... bleh), Windows(r) really excels in that area.
According to research at an English university, you stick CDs up your ass.
The first time I listened to it (for about 18 months) there was a bit of crackle that coincided with the baseline in all the tracks on the CD. The second time I listened to it, just a couple of hours later, the crackle was throughout the CD and very strong. It turned from a minor annoyance to completely unlistenable. I guess the power of the laser in my stereo was enough to destroy the data still further.
By going through a fair few of my CDs I found that it was only one brand (Princo) that was affected. CD-R's of other brands that were burnt earlier than the Princo ones still played fine. I've since gone through and re-burnt all the Princo CD's that had something important on them.
The CD's were Princo CDR-80's from several different batches. (I bought them a few times because they seemed good at the time.) Has anyone else had problems with Princo CD-R's or any other brands?
But I have burned my fair share discs and while I can't speak for any of their other media, the Memorex Black line was pretty sweet.
I can't find any information about them on Memorex.com so they might have discontinued them due to what I'm sure was a higher cost in manufactoring.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
The only CDs I've had go bad due to fungus were Sony CDs. Luckily, I had never used them. I had a Sony laptop that was so bad it could not be repaired. It took 18 months to get my Sony rebate for the laptop; eventually someone at Sony said the rebate fullfilment company was guilty of fraud.
I bought a cendyne [http://cendyne.com/] writer
(it was basically a plextor with a new face plate)
and I burned a CDRW an ISO on it (none of that packet writing stuff) and the bitch wouldn't erase it afterwards, saying it was read-only media.
I managed to erase it only ONCE using
a demo blindwrite (subsequent attempts weren't successfull -- stupid software).
Now I got a TDK VeloCD USB,
and managed to erase the bastard
(crappy software is all there's to it, whether it was ez-cd-creator to blame, or nero to the rescue, or the firmware on the writers themselves I don't know)
BTW, the media was Great Quality (GQ),
basically a no-name brand sold at Frys Electronics (outpost.com)
They work great for a no-name brand (well basically no name)
Permanent markers use solvents that can easily damage CDs.
There are special water-based CD marking pens. They are both convenient and probably safe. I would guess that water-based overhead pens are probably OK as well.
I also buy only TDKs.
my entire divx collection of "telly tubbies" will be unreadable in 2 years !
Nooooooo !
On a less serious note, if you must make CD backups for important data, make 2 copies and store them in different locations.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Common guys...everyone know who to permanetly archive there music:
Kazaa
(...all credit to go to Linus for an old archiving tag line...)
You must not stab the cd OJ!
Of course your CDs won't work if you MURDER them with a marker OJ!
You sure about this ?
I had a pet once
I think the cdr's in question are the ones that the recording material is actually part of the label itself. I bought a spool of those disc's and if you warp them a few times or scratch the label the CD is gone.
Your best bet is to always buy cdr's that have writing that's actually a place where the spray on label they had a stencil in place so you definately know the recording media is embedded into the plastic.
Never ever ever ever EVER!!
You sure about you're grammar skills ?
In the early days of the film industry (about 100 years ago), movies could not be copyrighted. However, because of a loophole in copyright law, a print of the movie on photographic paper was allowed to be copyrighted. Therefore most of the early motion picture studios like Edison and American Biograph submitted paper prints of their films to the Library of Congress for copyright purposes.
After a few decades, almost all the original film had been lost due the decomposition of the nitrocellulose movie film stock. However the paper prints did not deteriorate. The Library of Congress has resurrected hundreds of movies from the early days of cinema by transferring the paper prints to new film stock.
Here is an article detailing the this history of these restoration efforts: A Short History of the Paper Print Restoration
Large batch produced CDs (such as music CDs, AOL CDs etc) are manufactured by stamping the CD pits into a thin layer of aluminium. This is then covered in plastic to protect it on the bottom and a layer of ink on the top. There is no dye layer to degrade with time.
CDRs have a blank die layer into which the CD writer burns the pits. This dye layer is what is causing the problems for long lifetime.
wot no sig
well, it's certainly not the hobbyist dogooders', or file swappers' fault.
Bowie is in europe touring. You are an ignorant fool.
I buy CD-Rs without any label, and mark them with a Sharpie... I've burned literally thousands of CDs since I got my first CD-RW drive, and still haven't had one fail.
Who did what now?
They make labels for cd's?
I don't think I have ever used labels. To much work. I am lazy by nature. Hehe I have cd's that I never even wrote what was in them. I will sit here once in a while and put the cd's in to see what is on each one and write what is on them or chuck them.
Wow. Idiocy in its purest form.
I have a hard time believing this. I've had some CDR archived materials for 5 or more years that read fine. I think the bigger problem is clueless users (like I used to be) who mistakenly burned CDR media at a speed too high for what the media is rated for. Those discs seem to run fine at first, but then die later. I've lost several gigs due to this problem just because I know how I used to burn CD's.
I got a CD of my university work back in 1996. I've just tested the contents with tar and not a problem. The CD was not in a dark, cold room, but with my regular CD collection.
FYI it is a CD-R74 650MB TDK. Gold on the label side, and green on the other.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
- Missing data sector headers (that would cause a hard drive to give an uncorrectable read error) are no problem due to wobbled track clocks
- Every data track is verified by the laser as soon as it's written
- A defective sector is mapped into the spare area
- Data is spatially shifted when overwritten into a sector guard area decreasing statistic probability of same-bit writes on a spot
- Data is usually flipped in every sector overwrite by a random inversion (stored in look-up table) so the laser doesn't write 1000 consecutive high-temperature decrystallisations to the same spot which would denature the writing surface
This is why for backups I bought a LG GSA-4040B DVD+-R+-RW-RAM CD-R-RW and use DVD-RAM type 2 with labels on the jewel case (I only touch the DVD-RAM when handling using gloves so my finger grease doesn't contaminate the edges). NEVER touch either surface, not even the label-sid as finger-grease can contaminate it the same as a cheap label. DVD Reed Solomon ECC is 10 times better than CD despite only a 7x increase in recording density.Of course during the 60 minutes burn (1.5 MBytes/s) you MUST keep your head on the drive to listen out for any unexplained seeks that could indicate defects. If you hear them then rewrite the DVD-RAM so that defect management can kick in (I'm not sure if this is necessary but I'm sometimes overcautious)
IF YOU DON'T HANDLE YOUR BACKUPS IN CLEAN-ROOM CONDITIONS YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR DATA, and therefore are a Joe sixpack "Dang I lost all my data, whoa the 69'ers hit a home run that's way more important dude"
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
Spend a few minutes at that site and lighten your day. I kind of like the idea my old data fades away. God knows I'm never going to convert those old Word Perfect documents store on 'lifetime guarantee' disks to something more modern. Hell, I'm not even going to put them in my floppy drive... (which itself is still in the orginal packing box that my laptop arrived in, might have thrown it out....).
Anything really important I bestow to the old favorite storage medium, paper. I particularly like the patent free imaging system called photography, and I've found an ink pen or graphite pencil to work in some pretty tough situtions (not to mention in letters to lovers), and can generally be ready without loading a new kernel module (though I hear XML is pretty cool, because it describes itself (ha, as if anyone's self opinion is likely to be accurate)).
RG
I think I'll use that large storage media that's so popular. I believe they call it "internet" or something.
home
I'm meta-moderated your moderation "uninteresting", may you lose your ability to moderate soon. Let that be a lesson to all of you.
BWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!
I check the quality of my CD's randomly using KProbe for Lite-On drives (sorry, no direct link - look for it on the net).
This tool can check the the error correction data (aka C1 or C2) stored on the CD, which is an important factor in 'how long a cd will last'. If this data contains errors, chances are high you will be left with a coaster after 2 years.
Nero's CD-speed, as mentioned in other replies, can only measure the C2 data. Plextor also released a tool that measures this data.
Other than that I now, by default, protect important data I store on CD's by redundancy. This can be acomplished by using various PAR-tools.
Depending on how much you love your data, increase the redundancy. Yes you can store less data on the disk, but with a 'simple' error you can at least hope to retrieve your data for 100%
It still doesn't hurt to burn 2 CD's though, and store them both in a safe place.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Surely the moral is dont waste your money on cheap CD's, stick to a good brand!
I find verbatim to be a good one, very reliable on faster burn speeds too. I once bought a spindle of cheapo cdr's that were so crap that the foil had no laminate covering it. you could literally rub it of with your finger.
I am a lot more careful what media I buy now because it makes sense to spend a little extra than lose money burning coasters.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Dear Mr. Hall,
I am Mr. Edd Hall. You undoubtedly are familiar with me as the announcer and voiceover specialist for NBC's award-winning television show, "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
It has come to my attention that you have been using the name "Ed Hall" in your communications. As I am sure you are aware, "Ed Hall" is confusingly similar to my copyrighted mark, "Edd Hall." Your use of my mark in bad faith, in a clear and obvious attempt to confuse the general public into believing that your own opinions belong to me, must not continue.
I hereby request that you cease and desist all use of the name "Ed Hall," or any other names which bear similarity to the copyrighted and trademarked name "Edd Hall," at once and in permanence.
Regards,
And me, I'm Edd Hall!
The only really reliable way to archive something is to make 2/3 copies of it and place them in different areas.
And check the integrity of the data periodically! Setting aside the issue of media becoming obsolete, everything decays sooner or later, and you want to get your data onto new media before that happens.
Excuse my ignorance but what, if anything, makes the CDs used for store bought audio CDs superior to CDRs? How long could I expect music CDs I started buying in 1991 to last?
Nooo Means Nooo!
What does it take to get it through ur thick numskull??!!!
Actually you've got a rebadged Liteon, all of Sony's high speed drives are Liteon's. The good bit about that is though Sony never issues upgraded formware (with faster speeds, more formats, etc.) Liteon does and they can be tweaked so the drive still reports itself as a Sony whatever.
For downloads of tweaked firmware & flashers check out www.sonycrx2xx.org and for a list of the drives that can be upgraded check out Sony Compatability Chart. Made my $20 Sony drive a lot faster & a lot more reliable, got rid of that "hold button for full speed" sillyness.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
the only CDs I have that have lasted more than 19 months or so are my Kodak Golds, the oldest of which were burned sometime in 1995. In particular, I've found any CDs that use a blue dye to be the most fragile/short-lived.
I have some 650MB TDKs (blue) I burned 5 years ago that are still readable now. Just another data point . . .
I recently discovered this problem with a batch of memorex CD-Rs. Aparently the cheap Memorex CD-Rs' reflective strip is part of the label. So when my label got a chip in it after a couple of weeks the cd was rendered unusable. Do they make CD-Rs where the reflective strip is embedded inside the plastic?
Hmmm nope , but then again I've never confessed to being grammatically correct in any of my correspondence.
I had a pet once
This whole goddamn topic should be -1 Redundant. There's not a single breath of fresh air on the entire page.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I wonder if the fragility of CD-R is in part a problem with the fragility of the data formats used of the disk? Has anyone mapped the spatial distribution of data errors in CD-R as they age or display various age-related problems?
If the errors are patchy (i.e., flakes of media delaminating, spots of corrosion, etc.), then a data format with long-distance redundancy could increase the effective life of the disk. It would have to be a radically different format -- the directory would need to be redundantly stored and the drive would need to know to look in different parts of the disk to find and reconstruct clean directory data.
If, on the otherhand, the errors are diffuse and have a steadily increasing probability that rapidly approaches 1, then nothing can be done.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Pure speed of retrieval. Any error correction is going to slow the speed of the drive. So the data rate will be less on cds with lots of errors. It would take a lot of benchmarking on each physical drive to achieve a base line.
And the process would not be perfect.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Don't burn at 52 speed. Use media that is specced for the lowest speed you can find, and burn it at that speed or lower. You need to drink coffee anyway.
If the data on CD-R's decays by either reverting or fogging, then reading at a slower speed might help. Do all drives automatically slow down when BER (bit error rate) increases? Are some of the variations in people's experience with different brands of media due to the quality of the drive they use to read the CD-R?
I'd bet that in many cases the data is still on the CD-R, its just a bit harder to read. On the other hand, if the media layer flakes off, the data is gone.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
...cover the top surface of the disk with a thick layer of finish (usually paint of some kind). The media ends up being thicker/heavier and more expensive, but I've never had one die (and I have some fairly old burns at this point dating back to CD-R drives connected through dedicated ISA cards).
On the other hand, some of the CD-Rs my friends have given me from those bulk spindle packs have started to lose foil (i.e. "peel") just a few months later. A good indicator for failure seems to be that there's no brand name (or indeed marking of any kind) on the top side of the disk.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I've got an old Apple IIe sitting in my basement circa 1982. Last year, I fired it up and was still able to play games I had stored on 5 1/4" floppies. Long live magnetic media, or rather, magnetic media lives long!
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
I didn't mention that the UV exposure from an office full of fluorescents for a full day is equivalent to 8 minutes in the midday sun, so the difference between fluoro and incandescent is quite trivial.
Sounds familiar. That's how I ended up walking ten miles across a city barefoot. I was visiting a friend, and my shoes were in his room. Gonna suck for quite awhile. It does get better eventually.
Maybe she couldn't handle turning a friend into a lover. Maybe you should be flattered that it's your roommate, unless they're great friends or he's really hot. Her choice of your rommate might unconsciously be for your benefit. Then again, it could just be that he's there.
The really cynical guys say a woman sees you as not-a-lover once you've been friends too long. The how-to pick up chicks folks, while revolting, make an interesting point about taking a supplicant position with a woman you're interested in.
From my memory of long painful friendships with women I was infatuated with, there was a different quality to it. None of those women was ever my lover (for long.)
Still, most of the women who were my lovers were my friends first, but that sense of painful infatuation wasn't there. Maybe we just acted on our interest sooner in the relationship. I'm no help. I wish I could tell you the difference. Hell, what I'm talking about may not apply to you at all.
Get out of there. Yeah, I know it's 3 am, so for now you're trapped in Hell, but I'd suggest going out for breakfast. You need to be somewhere else while they're together. Go hang out with other friends. I'd stay away from both of them as much as you can. This doesn't sound like the sort of thing you can talk over and improve anyway. Glaring at them over breakfast will be less fun for you than for them. Those "But why not me?" conversations are unbelievably unpleasant, and I've never found them to help. Do something else.
Go.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Its a major problem here. Videotapes, Camera lenses and CDs all get attacked by fungus. I think the same fungus kind of fungus is responsible for all. You got to put them in a dehumidifier to prevent fungus growth.
I have CD's from 8 years ago, 4 years ago with stick on labels. I haven't had a failure on any (yet). I would think the harsh chemicals in permanent marker would be more damaging to the CD-R than the label glue anyway.
I also only have a 4X burner (which may be significant from other reports I've seen). I noticed higher failure rates from a 12x burner used at work, but these disks seem to fail sooner rather than later.
For storage, I keep them either in a jewel case or protective sleeve at room temperature, but out of sunlight. Humidity varies.
Keep in mind, this article only presents anecdotal evidence about labels, not a study on their impact.
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
"3. Proper storage, that is, air conditioned (de-humified), dark, clean rooms is important."
Well that leaves out most geek rooms...the clean part that is.
Ah, yes, like Tamiya acrylic model paints which are labelled "Non-toxic".
Which is true: the paint itself is non-toxic, although the solvent it's suspended in that is highly toxic. But when the paints used, the solvent evaporates; therefore it is non-toxic.
Don't go sucking on those Sharpies (Xylene-free or not) just yet; find out what the solvent is and you may just be frightened (clue: it ain't water).
If a CD is broken and you try to mount it the whole system can hang.
This happened to me after I used a very sticky label that took off a cm of film off from the edge. Most of the CD is fine but as soon as it gets near the edge everything hangs.
I found a windows program to do it - you can order by sector and keep trying to copy until it hangs - but at least a reboot isn't needed; can kill program and start again.
What I need is a program that spawns a few other processes, reads (using dd) the removable media until one of the program hangs, it remember that sector and avoids, much like fsck would.
A blog I run for the wealth
The reflective layer is perhaps one of the most important parts to a CD, but in the case of el-cheapo discs I have noticed an annoying tendency to nick or bubble up. Boils down to a low-grade lacquer job for the protective layer coupled with a poor plating job on the reflective layer for those discs. The discs that did it to me happen to have been some bargain-basement unlabeled stuff that came from a shrink-wrapped bulk stack of CD-R's. Everything else I've used has held up quite well, including stuff from K-Hypermedia. I'd avoid anything that is in bulk pack sleeves as it's liable to be of low quality unless you KNOW who made them.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Make sure to put contact info over the juicy bits so that nobody can crop it out.
Blar.
"Specifically, if the plastic substrate shrinks less than the paper label, the data-layer will be quite literally ripped apart"
Paper may not be as thermally responsive as polycarbonate, but it is a lot more flexible, so I think the paper would flex with the polycarbonate substrate. If anything, the printed data layer would be more rigid than the paper, and pose more of a problem by itself.
Either way, polycarbonate is a very stable, rigid material, which is precisely why it is used. The effects of solvent leeching and imbalance due to poor label positioning would far outweigh any damage caused by thermal expansion and contraction.
It's a shame that individuals can't silk-screen their CDs cheaply. A modified ink-jet would be the closest thing to it.
It always made me nervous to label my CDs with a good black Sharpie permanent marker. I haven't seen any failures I can directly relate to it though, so I still do it.
I suspect since data is stored on the label side of the CD, not the shiney side, that things like markers, writing too hard on it with a ball point pen, glue, etc could cause serious problems.
And as a side note, my brand preference: Memorex is the only thing I'll trust my data on.
I tried verbatim once cuz it was cheap and about half of those were coasters. Of course, I didn't realize that until I'd backed up about 20gb onto a bunch of them, and had to reburn it all to Memorex.
no comment
Publication and sharing are the best data storage solution and have been since before written language.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Regarding comparative longevity of recorded data: has anyone had any experience with printing directly to the CD-R, either with a standard printer which also has that capability, or with a unit made specifically for that purpose?
Sanford has used SHARPIE markers on CDs for years and we have never experienced a problem. We do not believe that the SHARPIE ink can affect these CDs, however we have not performed any long-term laboratory testing to verify this. We have spoken to many major CD manufacturers about this issue. They use the SHARPIE markers on CDs internally as well, and do not believe that the SHARPIE ink will cause any harm to their products.
If it were an issue you can bet Sanford would be covering their ass legally and not making such a claim.
Look for a tool called CDCheck CDCheck. Downside is that you have to manually manage the .CRC files. There's also a sourceforge projected calld CFV which is a command line tool.
Or, if you're burning a new CD, set aside 10-25% of the space for parity data using QuickPar. That way, even if a portion of the disk becomes unusable before you have time to copy it to a new disc, you have good odds of getting all of the data back off of the CD.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Backing up is good, yes, but you should backup off-site.
;-)
In case of fire or theft.
You've already got part of the solution, of course, but couldn't you make it that the other machine you're backing up onto is NOT at the same physical location? That would give you some real piece of mind.
I use RSync for that and it works beautifully.
I encourage you to cultivate your paranoia to greater heights.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Boxes of redundant disks are safe from disk failure, but what if something takes out the whole box? Fire, flood, tornado, hurricane, structural collapse in a quake, a geeky thief, a software error.
To be absolutely sure, you need redundant universes, and even then, some third universe could come along and clobber you.
You are correct on the method of manufacture, but the aluminum layer is still subject to oxidation. If the polycarbonate layer is cracked, split, perforated, or otherwise damaged or defective, moisture can reach the surface and corrode it.
As a reliability engineer, I can tell you that the long-term longevity of manufactured materials is driven (a) by process characteristics (i.e. is there a manufacturing flaw) and (b) thermodynamics. Diffusion processes and chemical reaction rates are all driven by temperature.
If you want your CDs or CD-Rs to last forever, store them below 5 degrees Kelvin or so. You can immerse them safely in liquid helium, it's inert. Make sure it doesn't go superfluid on you, and climb out of the Dewar and away from your 'Britney Unplugged' sessions.
:troll pops a Tums trying to digest that:
Yep! Once, I mail ordered a 100-pack of generic, cheap CDRs, only to find that the foil layer was practically painted on the top of the plastic CDR, with no protective coating over it at all! You could literally wipe out hundreds of megs. of data with one little scratch of the fingernail anyplace on the top of the disc!
Needless to say, that whole spindle got returned immediately. In fact, this story seems a bit ironic, because when I encountered that issue - I remember thinking "You know, I could probably make these cheap discs usable if I was only printing labels to stick on the top of each one as soon as I finished burning ir!" Guess a gummed label turns out not to be such a good protective covering after all....
But as other readers have mentioned, I always thought the old Kodak gold CDRs were about the best money could buy (and they did cost a lot of money). I pulled a few out that we burnt data onto back when the first 1x CDR drives first came out from Phillips, and they still read great. The discs also feel heavier and appear to be a bit thicker than others. TDK discs never felt quite this "solid", but they seem to have held up well over the years too. I used to buy TDKs almost exclusively, but in the last few years - started buying any recognizable brand that was on sale (Verbatim, Sony, Memorex, etc.) I recently had a horrible 50-pack of Maxell's though. They had a silver-ish dye, and seemed to be a bad production run or something. Almost all of them looked like they hadn't even been burnt yet after writing data to them. (You could hold them up to a bright light at just the right angle and see where data was recorded, but it was so faint - I was sure they'd give me trouble.) Sure enough, many of them only read properly once or twice after burning. Then they became coasters within 1 week....
People always point out that "there are only a handful of companies that actually manufacture blank CDR's - so most major brands you see in stores are made by someone else anyway". This is probably true, I suspect large companies (like Kodak) have the ability to request that their blanks be made for them to certain specs. Therefore, I might order direct from Mitsui (who supposedly makes the CDRs for Kodak) and still not get something identical to what's sold under the Kodak brand.
They even appeared to have some damage around the edges from the sunlight.
Remember that CDs play from the centre outwards, so the edge damage would only matter if the CD was near-full (or would it?...)
You can illustrate this yourself by looking at the underside of a blank CD-R (or RW), writing a small amount of information, then looking again- you'll notice the slightly darker written patch is at the centre.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Yeah, They're one of the worst cd-r I've ever seen.
If you care about your data don't use cheap media
YFI, or "You Fail It, or YFI for short!" for long!
I was the guy who sent him the info on %WINDIR% and all that info on what it is/how to use it, for his clean up scripts, and not only did he not credit me, but he even gave the credit to OTHER folks who wrote in in subsequent weeks. In other words, I sent him info, he used it without crediting me, then other folks send him more info, and he fucking credits those other people.
Not reading his stuff anymore.
-the B0fh
The following things are known to adversely affect CD-R life:
- Application of anything to the CD-R surface that is soluble in the plastic (generally polycarbonate) medium that constitutes the disk. This includes label adhesives and inks. One thing that is definitely safe is water based formulations such as what is used in the CD marking pens sold by TDK. I have personally seen enough CD-R's marked with Sharpies fail to never want to use these markers on a CD-R.
- Direct exposure to sunlight or exposure to temperatures above 40 C. With some of the crappier dye formulations out there this can lead to failure in as little as 1/2 hour.
- Use of poor quality media. Princo and other Tiawanese based CD-R manufacturers have a very bad track record. The best media is based on a gold stabilized dye formulation invented and sold by Mitsui. Kodak was a licensee of this until they got out of the CD-R manufacturing biz. (The only way you will get my cache of Kodak Gold media is by prying it out of my cold dead hands.) Kodak published estimates of 200 year lifetimes for it's Gold Ultima media. Mitsui is the same chemistry and should work just as well. I have never seen a Kodak Gold CD-R fail, including after having been left on a car dashboard in direct summer sunshine. Generally media manufactured in Japanese plants is usually ok for normal use. Be careful - outfits like TDK, Fujifilm etc. sell from several sources. Buy the ones made in Japan, not the ones made in Taiwan. For critical stuff like family pictures, tax data, etc. go for the gold.
If you are concerned about permanent markers soaking in and destroying your media, you can ensure that there is no data under the marker. Fill the disk only part way, and then label the disk around the outside edge. The TDK disks I own have the silkscreened label area out on the edge, presumably for this reason.
Better, write s title or code number in the transparent part in the centre and you don't lose any capacity. Keep the contents list on the cover or a file on your PC.
Check out the freeware win32 tool Nero CDSpeed which has many excellent functions for measuring the quality of optical discs (CD, CD-R, CD-Rw, DVD, etc) and tools for verifying the integrity of stored data. Its scandisc function test the drive's ability to read each file at the filesystem level and read each sector at the physical level, telling you which sectors are good, which are failing and which are dead.
An interesting side effect of using this tool is that I've noticed that the manufacture of pressed DVDs is highly variable! Some discs are excellent, some are crap. And it seems to be pretty consistent with the company that distributed them too. Some discs read very smoothly while others require all kinds of speed adjustments by the drive to get data out of them.
... and UV filters are available for florescent bulbs, just in case you need them.
BTW, the high brightness halogen incandescent bulbs do emit UV light, but not the standard coated, screw in bulbs; and florescent bulbs dump a shitload of UV out at the ends, where there is no coating.
I work in a darkroom, around things that are very UV sensitive. Someone taking a flash picture nearly had his head mounted on a pike by the door this week!
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
We used to use mylar tape for our "archival" stuff. Tougher than hell. In fact, you couldn't tear it with your bare hands. As for a reader: eBay. I just looked and found two for sale right now.
CD's are too small. And the limited lifespan thing is a very large negative.
DVD's are going to prove out to meet the same fate. We need something that we can store data on that will last 100 years.
Some people will say, "Bah, in 100 years there will be no machines that can read the discs." Wanna bet? (you're likely to find plenty in my house/garage)
Maybe you could put your really important CD's in a nitrogen enviroment. But that's not going to work for the majority.
It's time to develop a truely permanent medium.
Books are disentegrating at an alarming rate, CD's are rotting away, video tape goes bad, magnetic storage demagnetizes, photo's crumble, hard drives crash (I just lost my son's graduation and prom photos when my hard drive overheated and went crazy. I can not replace those photos now, they are gone forever.)
What ever happened to holographic storage in crystals?? Perhaps that's what we should go full tilt towards and dump this old and failure prone tech. out with the bath water...
Firstly you should obviously be using high quality discs. Those cheapies will die quickly. Get ye some Taiyo Yuden, Memorex Black, TDK or similar.
Note that there are only something like twelve companies in the world that manufacture CD-R discs and then the brand name of many other companies are printed on them. For example if you find FujiFilm CD-R spindles that say "Made in Japan" then they're probably TY. This is what I use religiously. (Note: Some Fuji is made in Taiwan by Ricoh as well. You're safe to ignore these ones.)
Use a good physical storage method. This means that both the front and back of the discs are protected. Honestly I find that the Microsoft's Technet binders offer the best security and disc density in this field. The little sleeves are modular and the binders have rings so you can open the binder, hand the disc WITH THE SLEEVE to the next person and avoid getting fingerprints or dirt the disc. A lot of other binder sleeves leave half the disc exposed so they're rubbing against each other and so on. This is bad. You want the front and back of the disc to be protected completely.
I also put a little silica gel pack in my CD-R binders although honestly I have no systematic evidence that this helps control the humidity and makes a difference in the discs' longevity. But I'm better safe than sorry. (I basically collect the packets when I open the boxes from new computer products. At one job I had I opened a lot of new products so I collected a lot of the packets.)
I use a water based marker to label all my discs. No glue-on labels or alcohol based markers to eat through the discs. Now admittedly there are lots and lots of cases where people use sanford sharpies (which are alcohol based) and have NO bad side effects. Many of my older discs are labelled with sharpies and only ONE out of hundreds has failed, and there's no evidence that the sharpie was directly related. Still, you can't go wrong with a pack of 4 memorex water based CD-markers for $3. The only downside is that sharpies give you a daker, finer ink stroke.
And if your data is really that important, I hope you're not burning only one disc. Burn 3 and keep them in different physical locations so if one disc is lost to theft or file or decay, your data is not instantly lost.
All I want for Christmas is this and this. That will take care of a LOT of problems.
Avery had a bad batch a long time ago (roughly 5 years ago) that shrunk more than they should which ripped/dragged the lacquer and reflective layer off of the disc. Ever since I heard that I try not to use labels.
Recently, I placed some labels on TDK 80 mins (these discs had a writable surface that is incompatible with some storage plastic sleeves--made the CD label sticky) and discovered one of the failed due to "something happening" to the label side. Closer inspection looks like the reflective surface has come loose. Cannot say if it was heat or the label, but all my other CD-Rs that basically live in the car don't exhibit this behavior. The labels are suspect.
Next thing you know, we'll hear about incompatible or a bad batch of ink.
To bad some enterprising person who has some free time cannot come up with a CD-Burner/Painter that is affordable enough for the standard PC user. So when it burns it prints the lable on the CD.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Try reading at a lower level.
That should be modded that low.
That's cool info..
The second one reminds me of PDP core memory.
I had one, many years ago but someone stole it.
shit, brain fart. I meant should NOT be modded that low..
Look for a tool called CDCheck CDCheck. Downside is that you have to manually manage the .CRC files. There's also a sourceforge projected calld CFV which is a command line tool.
That's good to detect errors after they happen. But it's too late by then, you can't fix them. And generally a CD error doesn't result in incorrect data; it results in unreadable data (although I'm sure these tools would inform you of a read error, so they're still useful).
Someone else mentioned Nero CD Speed, and its feature list includes C1 error detection (on some drives). A C1 error is a warning sign that your CD is in bad shape, but it's still possible to rescue your data.
Are there any open-source tools which can do the same? Is C1/C2 error-detection even a standard IDE/ATAPI feature?
a lower end model (900) can be had for $200
prints on cdr's-- beautiful output... quick too..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Some discs read very smoothly while others require all kinds of speed adjustments by the drive to get data out of them.
getting data out of DVDs? the data is supposed to stay in them! You are in violation of the DMCA. please turn off and step away from the computer and wait calmly for Ashcroft to arrive in a fleet of black helicopters
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Learn the difference between the words, "looser" and "loser"
Okay.
You are a loser
And your asshole is looser than a sixty year old hooker's pussy.
I'm just talking about normal playback here - Reading the raw encrypted sectors. Playing DVDs for the purpose of watching the movie is a real time process and if the drive has to make too many adjustments to read a poorly manufactured disc, then playback will suffer. This is why poorly pressed discs are undesirable. That's what I'm concerned about.
As to ripping DVDs to unencrypted VOBs, I could do that but since it's not a time sensetive process I don't mind if the ripping process is not totally linear with respect to decrpyted data / time issues.
And as to Big Brother Ashcroft, I don't live in the USA or an oil rich nation without a well developed refinery industry so I'm not worried.
Reburned them for archival copies. 12 Discs - No errors. Never used labels (always figured they were dodgy), used water-soluble ink marker. No Sharpie!
They are some of the oldest mp3s in my collection! Also kind of nostalgic reading through 10-year-old NFOs from cracker groups long past.
Da Blog
The amount of UV is not great (fair enough - in darkroom circles I suppose it could be a problem) - where I used to work we conducted an experiment with (UV Erasable) EPROMS to see what would possibly happen to our racks of electronics if the stickers were left off the quartz erase window: we burnt ten EPROMS and rested them on top of the fluorescent tubes in the lighting fixtures in the lab, where they sat for 6 months and then a year. At the end of both periods we tested the EPROMS for errors and not a single bit was out of place.
Anyone stuck a CD-R in a similar location or a UV light box?
AT&ROFLMAO
I have a million of them :)
Slashdot has covered MRAM before
Well DONE! see kiddies - it is possible to learn stuff via Slashduh...
Since I want my data to be readable for a long time, just like everyone else, I've been following this issue closely. I'm no scientist, though, and all the technical data makes my head hurt. But I have slogged through an awful lot of articles on this subject, and just to save everyone else like me some time, I thought I'd share my highly technical conclusion:
You get what you pay for. Buy cheap, shitty, spindle-mounted CD-R's for a dime each, and you'll get shitty data retntion. Pay more for good-quality blanks, and you'll get good data retention. This *is* one of those cases where higher price does equal higher quality.
You'd think this would be obvious, but it seems that a lot of people are trying to get something for nothing, have their cake and eat it too, or however you want to look at it.
If you want your data to last, don't be a cheapskate. Which would you rather have, your data readable in ten years, or the $10 you saved today by buying cheap blanks?
I think stone and cave walls are the best Mediums for long term storage.....
:)
:)
It would be funny to see people study my MP3 collection etched in stone in 1000 years from now trying to figure out what it is
As i am sure if the recording industry has it way once people 1000 years from now are able to decode and play my MP3 collection they will either have to pay royalty fees or face a law suit under the DCMA
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Large batch produced CDs (such as music CDs, AOL CDs etc) are manufactured by stamping the CD pits into a thin layer of aluminium.
No, this is totally wrong. Audio CDs and CD-ROMs (not the CD-R/RW types) are made by hot, high pressure injection molding of polycarbonate against a negative of the pits and lands. Then a layer of pure aluminum is sputtered onto this pit-and-land imprinted plastic disk. A layer of clear lacquer is then applied on top of the aluminum to protect it. Silk screen or offset printing follows.
I worked at a CD replicator from 1993-1996.
This has two advantages: you use the data CD format, which has more native error correction than the audio CD format [ever wonder why 80 min CD-Rs didn't hold the corresponding ~800 MB of data?], plus FLAC is more error-resistant than other lossless audio compression formats.
To top it off, create some parity archive files for extra protection. Then burn at least two copies, on different brands of reputable media.
That's the least I would do, considering how hard it is to get the original data again, if at all.
Links:
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
I think DVD media is sort of hard-coded with a maximum burn speed. It will usually say the maximum supported speed on the media packaging, or Nero Bruning Rom can tell you what that speed is if you click on "medium info." After doing some online research it seems like Ritek/Ridata makes good 4x media at a reasonable price. I bought myself a spindle of 25 and have had zero problems burning at 4x so far.
I upgraded (if you call it that) from a plextor 16x to a sony 52x (really 48x).
Actually you've got a rebadged Liteon, all of Sony's high speed drives are Liteon's
I was wondering if they where another brand, and liteon gets so many good reviews.. Also I found you have to hold down the eject button while you power on to get 52x. Not really a 52x if you have to hold down buttons. Its a Sony CRX220E1, so that site sonyxrc2xx.org says "Sony CD-RW CRX220A1/E1 = OEM Liteon LTR-52246S" Going to check for newer firmware now.
First, this is a non-article. There are no actual findings reported, just that the author happened to notice that more of his labeled disks were failing compared to non-labeled. Well, that's hardly a scientific conclusion, it could be due to any number of things. Without a controlled experiment I don't lend any credance to this theory.
Second, I'd like to suggest that perhaps labeled disks are suffering from mechanical problems and not optical problems. What I mean by that is that if the label is not centered precisely it will cause the CDR to no longer balance. When spun at very high speeds, even a little bit of out-of-balance will be multiplied by the huge lateral accelerations, causing the disk to flop around.
If you know anything about CD optical pickups, you know that the closed-loop servo system used to keep them in focus does a remarkable job of compensating for defects in the disk. Somewhere on the net there was an analogy that it was the equivalent of flying 50 feet above a highway at 600 MPH and being able to maintain that height to several inches while counting small spots in the road a few inches wide. Whatever -- I don't remember the specifics, but basically the servo loop that maintains the precise positioning does an incredible job of keeping the pickup in the right place over the disk. But it can't do miracles...
So the idea I'm presenting here is that perhaps these labels cause enough mechanical flutter to bring the disk too far out of the bounds that the optical servo system can deal with. In this theory, all discs age to some degree and become harder to read, but in the case of a misapplied label it quickly gets to be too much for the drive, and thus the disk becomes unreadable.
I've always used one of those "CD Stomper" applicators for the disks that I did label, and I find that it puts the label on almost exactly on center. I have many CDR disks from early 1998 (approaching 6 years old) that I made in the manner, and all of them are still perfectly readable as far as I can tell -- even in the car stereo which is particularly unforgiving. Again this is not scientific at all, but I'm just proposing a theory here, that perhaps it has more to do with the mechanical properties of the label and nothing to do with it "eating the dye away" or anything like that.
it just got really cold here, and i havn't been out in the day since thursday.
I know of a cd-r that had a life at the bottom a fish tank for 3 years. Cleaning the junk and fixing the scratchs from the rocks but took time but the data was fine. I would not like to try that with a tape.
There is a problem that has been over looked 52 spin speed cdrom drives. This is more leathal to backup than anything I can of think. The think that comes second is contaimated media by a fungi(Think it is fungi) that eats the plasic and metal coating. I have a few of theses. Problem is that one of these was a windows 95 cd what missed my backup system. Note the disk has every thing that it needs.
The problem with 52 spin speed cdrom drives are only just off of the spin limit of some media. Ie spin it past x rpm point it self detructs good fun way of destorying cds. Note x rpm point is slightly different from brand to brand the higher the better. This cracks the disk open letting the fungi(I think) in to the disk so both are linked together. Because disks that have been in high speed drives have higher fault rate over time.
The disk eater is just a bad disk the problem is that I have no way of detected it. The light that will detect it will destory the media if it is a cd-r with a bad die ie a Black light Now I would spend a extra 20c per disk for the means of detecting the dieing disk.
Now I only use cd pens so I never have label problems.
When removing a CD-R/RW from the drive, always return it to its case.
I label a case by writing on the non-sticky portion of the sticky side of a Post-It Note, then sticking the Post-It Note to the inside of the clear case top (so that the writing faces outward).
(Placing the note inside the case will prevent it from being inadvertantly removed due to external forces (e.g., two cases rubbing together).)
Cases also help to protect CD-R/RWs from scratches and other environmental hazards, and can be placed vertically (on edge) on a shelf without worries of it rolling off.
Using the above scheme, I have never lost a CD-R/RW to scratches, etc., and I can easily find the CD-R/RW that I want (I have never misplaced a CD-R/RW or placed the wrong on in the drive).
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Most of the CD's that I burn contain videos in VCD or SVCD format. When DVD burners become a bit cheaper I'll be burning to DVD instead of CD, but the label issue still applies. (Just in case MPAA is listening, these are videos that I shoot myself. No, really!).
Although I haven't tried it myself, I'm guessing the storage machine that you describe would be a little difficult to jam into the front of my DVD player.
Sometimes optical discs are the only option.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
I work with a major ERP software that has been shipping updates on writable CD media since 96. For 96 - 98, they shipped rewritable CD's. After the code on them was obsolete I took them home to use with my burner. Not one of these CD's lasted beyond 2002.
Maybe the early rewritables were flawed, but I wouldn't trust one beyond 4 years.
OK. So who has a cd 15-20 years old and it's working. Post the info!
Verbatim seems a company that puts some effort in their media. Ever since the days of 5.25" floppies, I have noticed that not all media is the same. And Verbatim (expecialy the DataLife) floppies were all 100% reliable. With any other brand I had to fear, as there was always some floppies that would fail (even BASF failed, rather often actually).
Nowadays I notice the same thing happening with CD-Rs. I was unfaithful to Verbatim, I confess, and bought two boxes of those nearly-no-name CD-Rs. I discovered that some of them are now unusable. They were backups of game CDs, which need to be inserted in the PC while you play, so they get warm, and constatnly.
Don't you just hate those games that require the CD in the drive? What a moronic thing.
Sigged!
One easy way to know when it's likely that media will fail is to determine when you'll probably need it most.
Just like the law that the likelyhood that a computer program you're working on will fail is directly proportional to the number of people witnessing your test.
from american high school and college students. They
haven't a clue as to the proper use of the language.
There was a story here a few months ago about CD-R lifespan. One test they did was to burn at slower speeds vs. higher speeds. Everybody expected the slower speeds to get better results. I would have guessed that as well.
The data showed the faster speeds lasted longer.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I burnt a CDR a while a go and promptly stuck the label to the wrong side. No problem, I thought - I'll just remove the label and stick a new one on the right side
After soaking the label in alcohol it peeled off. Minutes later the CD delaminated in spectacular fashion! One side was left with a foil layer, the other was a sticky mess
My conclusion? The disc edges are porous where the two halves are laminated together. Inevitably this means they'll absorb moisture / solvents / contaminants. It follows that the less well-made - and more porous - they are, the worse the effects will be
I have a failed TDK right here. I can see files, but they checksum out and can't be retreived.
I have many which failed after having been stored in a ring-binder designed for CDs. The plastic gets clowdy, and the discs are completely unreadable.
Would be happy to provide samples of failed disks to reputable industry researcher.
John Bartley
johnbartley at email daht com
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
Firstly, I call a fire-proof safe an ideal container because it is airtight and has a large thermal mass (little temperature variation, much less than a gun safe), not because it is fireproof. In my opinion, there is no reliable way of preventing heat damage to any media in the event of a fire, but we're talking about long term storage here, not disaster-proofing.
Second, the insulating material in most fireproof safes (or at least the numerous models I used to sell) is crushed concrete; not a lot of outgassing of water vapour there. Again, this is only an issue in the event of a fire, which, again, is not the reason I specified a fireproof safe.
Thirdly, I am aware a mu-metal case is important for magnetic media...but we are talking about CDs here, which are optical. Besides, how can you really call yourself a geek if you don't own a de-gaussing wand...?
Yes, store another copy offsite in a safety deposit box...now what is a safety deposit box, exactly? Its like a fire-proof safe, except that it doesn't have the thermal inertia, and may not be airtight if it's cheap. So the difference between my suggestion and yours is the word "fireproof", which you picked up for the wrong reason.
If they completely cover the light and they're made of plastic, then they are diffusive. Plastic absorbs UV light like nobody's business (hence the addition of UV stabilizers to outdoor plastic products), so the diffusers don't need to have any effct on visible light at all.
I'm not sure black-body physics applies entirely to halogens, because there is a plasma stage in the cycle.
Its been a number of years since I dealt with halogens academically, so, your honour, I would like to plead loss of memory as well as laziness.
Still, it was truly lazy of me not even providing a link to howstuffworks.com...
How about 2 successful burns out of 10 for a packet of Imation (green box) on a Yamaha 4x2x6 burner (hey, it was fast in '98!)?
Since then I've discovered the brands that work without problems. They are:
1) Kodak;
2) Kodak;
3) Kodak;
4) Kodak; and
5) Kodak.
Every other brand I've tried (from no-name to some by the big names in storage media) varies from batch to batch. The Kodaks are the only ones that seem to be manufactured to consistant specifications. That being said, I have noticed that if a CD writer that doesn't like one Kodak disk it won't like any.
No, I do not work for, or own shares in Kodak. But just in case anyone thinks I didn't mention Kodak enough...Kodak!