I tried to recover files off CDR's I burned 5 years ago and realized that CDR's don't last forever. Turns out that they fade really quickly, and if you bought a bad batch - the entire set may be corrupted in a few years.
There's lots of research on what happens to CDR's after several years, unfortunately they haven't been around that long (in mass use).
After my latest catastrophe, I've switched to backing to a portable HD, AND making 2 annual backups to CDR (using DIFFERENT brands of CDR). Hopefully Kodak or one of the big boys is working on a true archival quality cdr - till then, DIVERSIFY to save some grief!
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I tried to recover files off CDR's I burned 5 years ago and realized that CDR's don't last forever. Turns out that they fade really quickly, and if you bought a bad batch - the entire set may be corrupted in a few years.
There's lots of research on what happens to CDR's after several years, unfortunately they haven't been around that long (in mass use).
After my latest catastrophe, I've switched to backing to a portable HD, AND making 2 annual backups to CDR (using DIFFERENT brands of CDR). Hopefully Kodak or one of the big boys is working on a true archival quality cdr - till then, DIVERSIFY to save some grief!