Here’s one of those periodical reminders about the alleged uncertainty of the durability of recordable CDs
Oh, yeah, let us start this conversation all over again 🙂 there is a difference between archiving and storing. CDs store. Slides and film archive. I have some 4 year old DVD RAM disks going bad now with many, many, gigs of information on them.
I remember hearing these stories about audio CD’s in the late eighties, I just tried one I bought in 1983, 21 years ago, still works fine and converted a track to AAC in iTunes no problem.
My earliest CDR that I burned is only seven years old but that still works OK too. Which is more than can be said for the manufacturer of the CD writer and the store that sold me it.
Zeb wrote: "I remember hearing these stories about audio CD’s in the late eighties, I just tried one I bought in 1983, 21 years ago, still works fine and converted a track to AAC in iTunes no problem. "
It depends on the pressing plant. CDs from a certain pressing plant in the uk that were pressed in the late 80’s are subject to "cd rot". This can be seen by discolouration round the edges (a sort of bronzing) and later tracks of the disk becoming crackly or unreadable.
Excatly, so what’s with the hoopla… well, actually I know.
It depends on the pressing plant.
In this case which brand uses top notch production process ? Hopefully Imation (since it’s all I use for the last 5 years) and never had a single issue to date.
The distinction is in the dye-layer’s stability and longevity.
CDs that are manufactured use a different process that apparently lasts considerably longer on the average.
FWIW… I read an article a couple years ago that directly contradicted CD-RWs as lasting longer, but rather that they were more unstable than CD-Rs at that time. Perhaps they’ve changed the process for them in the last couple of years. I don’t use them any more because of problems I had with them after only a few months of storage. OTOH I’ve never had a CD-R go bad on me after many years of storage. Knock-on-plastic.
In addition, it probably makes the most sense to buy only first quality, major brand media instead of unbranded or private label stuff. You don’t know who makes the private label stuff for, say, Staples. (Not saying Staples media is bad — only that it is of unknown provenance.)
It’s not failsafe… but redundancy is really the key with *any* backup/archive process. Also, never throw all your eggs in one basket. Just because a DVD-R can hold an entire project worth of files doesn’t mean its the best (or only) choice. Spread things around a bit (burn a few CD-Rs of finshed files… make dupes of those and store off site… burn DVD-R of entire project… make dupes of that and store off site, etc etc etc).
No medium is 100% bulletproof. I get shivers just thinking of all the critical jobs I used to save to 1.4MB floppies…which reminds me — I still have a number of original type foundry floppies I need to archive before they flake away into oblivion and before I lose my last floppy drive.
At some point, we’ll be using cheap solid state media that uses molecular realignment or some such to permanently archive our stuff.
"After reading a few articles I think I am going to start using the gold CDs. I just do not know who sells them in our area. "
I’ve also been looking in vain for gold CDs in all the local retail establishments, and am getting tired of the process. Does anyone know a reliable on-line source for purchasing gold cds? My Google searches seem to produce an awful lot of data static and I’m finding it as tiresome wading through the thousands of meaningless hits as driving from store to store. Who still manufactures them? It seems that (according to a few retail sales people, who probably know nothing) most manufacturers stopped producing them.
I just finished a serious several days of researching this exact question and ended up ordering Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. Who is Taiyo Yuden, you ask? They’re the ones that invented CD Recordable media technology! And Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs outperform the competition in recording accuracy and superior durability in a wide variety of data and audio applications although, to be fair, Mitsui and a few others are very good.
They aren’t the cheapest but have the best information and seem to me to be solid, informed distributors, whose prices are below the middle of the pack.
Unfortuantely, since being so positive about the Taiyo Yuden’s a few days ago, I’m now considering using the MAM-A media found on the site above. You still can’t go wrong with the Taiyo Yuden’s but there is considerable discussion in the archiving community concerning which dyes are superior and I haven’t formed a solid conclusion, vacillating between the two on a daily basis. Finally, I’ll just jump in and a year or so from now have a really informed opinion!
I know how you feel. I am taking back a bunch of blue CDs and DVDs I bought three weeks ago.
On a related note. My brother who is also a photographer sends prospective clients his photos on paper and inks that he wants to know they will be no good in a period of time. It is like giving a client low quality jpegs. So, maybe the blue CDs might be good for somethings since they have been known to fail.
