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Data Storage

CD-R Lifespan - Is It The Label? 402

Posted by timothy from the it-is-the-taste dept.
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."
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CD-R Lifespan - Is It The Label? More

CD-R Lifespan - Is It The Label?

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  • I used to label my cds... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jarlsberg ( 643324 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:51AM (#7423226) Journal
    ...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.

    • Re:I used to label my cds... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @09:19AM (#7423588) Journal
      For one thing, humidity causes the clue to come off
      As a Southerner, I can assure you that these effects of humidity are generally permanent... The clue will stay off. In fact I suspect that in many specimens, the clue is never there to begin with. Alas I have yet to prove it.

      Fortunately, being of the "sunlight? what's that?" geek variety - you know, those of us who keep the A/C at 65 and only go out at night - I'm unaffected :)
    • For one thing, humidity causes the clue to come off

      I for one think this is crucial point in the SCO law suits. Someone needs to get SCO some dehumidifiers so that their clues won't keep coming off.

  • How about normal CDs? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:55AM (#7423227) Journal
    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?

    • Re:How about normal CDs? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by temojen ( 678985 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:58AM (#7423235) Journal
      What kind of protection do normal music CDs have to avoid this kind of rapid degradation? Is there any?

      Commercial manufacturers silkscreen their CDs, they don't use adhesive labels.

      What is an acceptable digital archival media?

      All media degrades. The trick is to use redundant data, and re-copy it before the media is expected to fail.

      • Re:How about normal CDs? Error detection (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:18AM (#7423269)
        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?
        • 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.

        • Re:How about normal CDs? Error detection (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Jucius Maximus ( 229128 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @02:02PM (#7424463) Journal
          "Is there a way to detect when a CD is about to fail?"

          Check out the freeware win32 tool Nero CDSpeed [cdspeed2000.com] 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.

          • 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

      • Re:How about normal CDs? (Score:4, Funny)

        by jackb_guppy ( 204733 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:41AM (#7423306)
        Would could should...

        Take four drives and record CD-R in a RAID 5 manner?

        This way if you loose 1 CD, the other 3 will recover.

        But then again using RAID will de-bug your software.

      • And if longevity of copies is the top priority- microfiche. Nothing beats it for expected life. It stand at close to, if not over, 100 years.
        • Actually, for longevity, I would have to go with... stone. It can't hold as much data, but it seems to last millennia, especially if it is stored properly. Not the best for portability either, but longevity was the key concept here.

        • Re:How about normal CDs? (Score:5, Funny)

          by NonSequor ( 230139 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @07:49AM (#7423477) Journal
          Parchment can last longer than that if you take proper care of it. You might need to design a special printer to use it. My suggestion would be to have thousands of monks make copies of your data.
        • Microfiche is great, but it's hard to read them digitally. ;-) That's why I prefer CD-R. Here are some tips from someone who archives a lot of (say a spindle per month for personal data, and no it's not pr0n) on CD-R:

          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 compa

      • Re:How about normal CDs? (Score:5, Informative)

        by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @08:58AM (#7423563)
        What is an acceptable digital archival media?

        All media degrades. The trick is to use redundant data, and re-copy it before the media is expected to fail.

        And don't forget to store archival media in an archive. That's right; cool (doesn't have to be freezing, but a consistent not-warm temperature), dark, low humidity.
        Non-damp basements spring to mind (as long as you don't have heating equipment in there).

        You might consider sealing off CD-R media in an airtight container, such as a (zip-lock) plastic baggy of suitable quality. If it's an opaque one that locks out light as well, all the better.

        If you're in the archive (basement) and need light, take care not to hit your archive media with direct light, and take care that UV light is kept to a minimum (i.e. fluorescent lighting is usually better than incandescent lighting).

        It also helps to use standard 650MB CD-R media with the ISO 9660 filesystem, in stead of the latest and greatest 818 MB overburned FooFS combination.

        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.

        Consider tape backups. Consider a regular archiving/back-up cycle, so that if a piece of media is a dud, you'll have a duplicate from the week before or after.

        Store media before use under the same conditions as you would the written archival piece. Don't buy from stores that have humid, warm warehouses.

        Index and catalogue your archive. Not only will it make it easier to find things, it will also help to find or sort out duplicates - handy if you switch to a different media and re-archive your old CD-Rs on DVD for example. Archive the index as well.

        Use integrity checks, such as checksums. Use compression formats that are easy to fix if a few bits go bad (e.g. no spanning ZIP archives which are useless if the last disk goes missing).

        Mix lots of media, unless you're sure that what you've got is a high quality. That way, if wednesday's backup is a dud because of crappy media, the backup from tuesday might at least be better.

        Once in a time, randomly check media to see that it's still readable.

        Another poster asked about CD-R based RAID; you can just use PAR [sourceforge.net] files (of USENET fame).

        • It also helps to use standard 650MB CD-R media with the ISO 9660 filesystem

          Yeah, if you can find 650MB discs anymore. I went spindle-shopping the other day and couldn't find any 650MB media (except generic ones which I don't trust anyway). Maybe it was just a bad day. <shrug>

        • 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

        • Re:How about normal CDs? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          "...and take care that UV light is kept to a minimum (i.e. fluorescent lighting is usually better than incandescent lighting)"

          I think you will find that a fluorescent tube puts out more UV than an incandescent globe (halogens the exceptions).

          A flourescent tube produces only UV light internally, which strikes a phosphor which fluoreses (hence the name), giving off visible light. Not all the UV output of the tube is converted; many places ban exposed fluorescent tubes for this reason, and require diffusive
        • Don't buy from stores that have humid, warm warehouses.

          How are you supposed to know the conditions for the warehouse for a given store? I doubt even the employees of the store would know the answer to this.

      • After doing a stint as a printer rep I learned that the main reason that bulk CD printing is done by a silkscreen-type method is (apart from cost) is that mechanically applied CD labels have a tendancy to throw off the balance of the CD itself as it rotates.

        Granted, (again from many hours with our tech staff) this is a much rarer problem these days as the drives have developed a higher error tolerance to rotational flutter. Just something to keep in mind when evaluating the failure tests.
      • I don't know the exact chemistry of this anymore (dammit - I actually was geek enough to know this, once...), but skipping the chemistry - CDs you buy in the store are built with a single material layer that is etched with the music and sandwiched into a plastic sleeve. A CD-R has two material layers (and sometimes more, but that's more common when you get into DVD-Rs) between the plastic sleeve and the first layer gets burned away in the etching process. In cheap CD-Rs, the second layer loses its cohesiv

    • Different Technology (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Maddog Batty ( 112434 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @08:32AM (#7423529) Homepage
      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.

      • Still can degrade (Score:4, Informative)

        by slyborg ( 524607 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @12:13PM (#7424040)
        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.
    • I have some twenty-year-old music CDs that, after reading the article, put in my CD-ROM drive to test. They played fine. Now, whether the CD-Rs and CD-RWs I've burned will hold up that long is another question.

      On the other hand, I have a bunch of old vinyl recordings, 33 RPM LPs mostly, some of which date from the fifties. They played fine also. Too bad they don't make CDs out of vinyl.

  • yumm.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tloh ( 451585 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:58AM (#7423234)
    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.

    • Re:yumm.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Demolition ( 713476 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:05AM (#7423252)
      Kodak used to subject their CDs to "torture tests" to see how they'd stand up. Their "Gold Ultima" CDs were reported to have a 100-year archival life. Now, they're saying the same thing about the Ultima brand (now that the Gold brand is discontinued). Study results are here [kodak.com].

      All I can say is that Kodak seems to have done a lot worse to their CDs than your friend did with just his tongue. :-)

      D.

      • Re:yumm.... (Score:5, Informative)

        by drsmithy ( 35869 ) <drsmithy@nOSPAm.gmail.com> on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:40AM (#7423304)
        Kodak used to subject their CDs to "torture tests" to see how they'd stand up. Their "Gold Ultima" CDs were reported to have a 100-year archival life. Now, they're saying the same thing about the Ultima brand (now that the Gold brand is discontinued). Study results are here [kodak.com].

        It's only anecdotal evidence, but 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. However, I do live in a location with fairly high humidity (Brisbane, Oz).

        • TDK (Score:3, Interesting)

          by achurch ( 201270 )

          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 have found the deep blue disks to last best. Most of the new disks that have silver/ light green color dye are just crap. The deep blue disks last 2-5 years in my car. The light green disks last maybe 6-8 months.

  • The Electric Kool-Aid Label Test (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John Leeming ( 160817 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:01AM (#7423244)
    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...

  • Media (Score:5, Informative)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:04AM (#7423250) Journal
    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.

    • AVOID MEMOREX (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Razzak ( 253908 )
      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
      • But I have burned my fair share discs and while I can't speak for any of their other media, the Memorex Black [buy.com] 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.

        • Re:I'm no expert (Score:2, Informative)

          by Drgnkght ( 449916 )
          I'm not an expert either, but I wanted to say that I agree about the Memorex Black line. They have been some of the best CDRs I've used. They are listed on the web site by the way. Here [memorex.com]

    • Re:Media (Score:4, Informative)

      by tamnir ( 230394 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @06:54AM (#7423416)
      I just wish there was some technical reviews on media, thickness, quality of materials, burn speed test, tested with multiple media.


      This site may come close enough to what you are looking for: CD Media World [cdmediaworld.com]
    • I have the same problem with media that you're talking about. I almost don't even bother with CD backups any more. Hard-drives, despite all the trouble I had with the IBM DeathStar earlier this year, are much more reliable. And cheap. Check out your Office Depot add. You can pick up a 120GB, 7200RPM, 8MB Cache, Western Digital drive almost every Sunday for $59 after rebates. (Not SATA unfortunately.) I now have 2 of the 120GB WD drives and I recently caught an even more amazing rebate for a 200GB WD
      • I'm really worried about archival storage in general. I'm a professional photographer, and all my work is digital. I'd like to keep that data around for the rest of my life. I'd been burning my photos to CDs or DVDs, but I keep hearing more and more reports about failing optical media. Your hard drives sound nice, but be sure to get at least 3 of them and make a RAID 5 array.

        Right now I've got four 80GB drives in RAID 5, and when I'm done with some work that I need to archive, I tar and gzip it all up

        • Re:Media (Score:4, Interesting)

          by WuphonsReach ( 684551 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @12:08PM (#7424032)
          Look into some sort of parity software to protect your files on the CD/DVD. They add extra files (usually 5-25% more space) that allow you to recover files that have been corrupted by the media degrading. I also create parity files for files on my hard drive (in my archive tree) because there are command line tools that will walk the directory tree and verify that all files are still clean. Take a look at QuickPar [sourceforge.net] for a parity tool. For a DVD, I'd recommend setting the percentage to 10-15% (will eat up around 15-20% of the DVD with parity data).

          Now for professional data, I'd recommend a few methods. First, hook up a 250Gb USB 2.0 drive and get software like rsync or SecondCopy 2000 to mirror files off to that drive daily. (SecondCopy has the ability to move deleted files to a seperate folder on the external drive, plus keep multiple revisions of changed files.) An advanced option is to get (3) drives, swap them weekly or bi-weekly, keeping the latest backup at an off-site location. Might want to get one of those custom foam carrying cases to put the USB drive in. I'd recommend getting the USB drives that have built-in power supplies (take standard computer cords) which gives you one less thing to lose or carry around. Peer II sells a nice, compact USB 2.0 enclosure (CA-405U2) that supports large format drives (if you get the latest models).

          Consider a tape backup that holds 50Gb native. Tapes are nice because they're small/portable. Downside is that tapes are expensive and backup software on Windows machines is usually proprietary.

          You'll still want to do the DVD-R method as well, which is a very good way to take snapshots of projects. Protect it with parity files, but don't depend on it as your only backup method.

    • Re:Media (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dunark ( 621237 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @07:28AM (#7423450)
      I've stopped buying Sony blank CDR's after getting a few bad batches of them. Some of them even had defects that looked like waterspots which were visible in bright light.

      After much shopping, I finally settled on TDK, which have given me zero problems out of several hundred burns. It's too bad the inferior products have gotten all the shelf space at many retail outlets; I have to go to CompUSA to get the TDK's.

    • Re:Media (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Pompatus ( 642396 )
      It's odd that you had problems with sony. Recently, my roommate moved out. We had 300 cd-r's that contained divx movies that were pretty much community property. I found a deal on 2 160 gig hard drives on pricewatch, so I bought the hard drives and copied all the cd's to harddrive (yes it took forever). It was an interesting experiment though because we have all major brand cd-r's in the collection. About 20 or so of the disks are dead after maybe 1.5 - 2 years. The sony disks faired better than any o
    • 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 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. 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 [sonycrx2xx.org] and for a list of the drives that can be upgraded check out Sony [sonycrx2xx.org]

    • Re:Media (Score:4, Informative)

      by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:01PM (#7424942) Journal
      It's not the brand that matters, it's the manufacturer. Most Sony, Memorex, and Imation disks are made by CMC, the Coaster Manufacturing Company. Most Fujifilm CDRs are made by Tayo Yuden, who basically invented the standard and make excellent quality media. You can determine definitively who made your media by running 'cdrecord -atip'

      You do have to be careful though as Fuji is starting to use CMC media more frequently. Since CMC is located in Taiwan, and TY is located in Japan you're generally safe if you only buy Fuji media that is made in Japan. It's written on the spindle. Alternatively you can buy spindles of unbranded TY media online. I like am-dig.com if I'm buying in bulk.

  • The top of the CD is the weak part. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:05AM (#7423251) Homepage
    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.

  • in my experience... I'd say no. (Score:3, Informative)

    by shione ( 666388 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:06AM (#7423253) Journal
    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.

  • Flaky Coating (Score:4, Interesting)

    by robbyjo ( 315601 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:08AM (#7423257) Homepage

    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.

    • ...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

  • forget labels (Score:4, Interesting)

    by s33l3t ( 722580 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:15AM (#7423266)
    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.

    • Re:forget labels (Score:3, Informative)

      by themooz ( 722597 )
      Be careful what permanent marker you use. Some say that depending on the kind of "oil" used in the ink it can "eat" through the disk eventually.

      Brand makers are even labeling some as CD safe nowadays - I'd make sure that you look for one marked as such just to be safe on any important CD's.

      Here's one article I found to elaborate a little more. Mac Lab Report [lowendmac.com]
    • 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.
      • Permanent markers use solvents that can easily damage CDs.
        So that's why the record companies were using DRM that a Sharpie could defeat! What better way to guarantee repeat purchases than by having your customers purposely (if not intentionally) destroy the CDs even faster?
    • From Sharpie's website: Is the SHARPIE marker safe for writing on CD's? [sharpie.com]

      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 w

  • I think the original story was just a bad batch. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ahfoo ( 223186 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:19AM (#7423271) Journal
    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.

  • Burn at a lower speed. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DraconPern ( 521756 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:26AM (#7423280) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:Burn at a lower speed. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That is kind-of a myth, but there is truth to it.
      Your CD-ROMs don't give a crap how burnt the media is, and for that matter neither does the media,
      once it's burnt it's burnt for good ;)

      What is important however is to burn at
      the appropriate speed.
      I had bought a bunch of Memorex and GW cdr's
      that were mislabeled as up to 48x compatible,
      but burning at 48x produced only coasters.
      According to "Nero CD Speed" they were only rated for 16x and 32x -- the cd's were good, but this speed crap really really really real
    • There is a flip side to burning at slow speeds though. Most high speed drives are only calibrated at thier highest speeds. So a lot of crc error creep into the burn process at lower speeds. It will be an interesting experiment to see if a slower burn that should result in a more complete bun will last longer than a fast burn with fewer errors.

  • Paint peeling off... (Score:5, Informative)

    by c.r.o.c.o ( 123083 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:31AM (#7423289)
    ... 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.

  • CDs are out, use hard disks for storage. (Score:5, Funny)

    by MongooseCN ( 139203 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:42AM (#7423307) Homepage
    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.
  • 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.

  • Cd's as a music archive: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by westyvw ( 653833 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:47AM (#7423316)
    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.
    • Frankly, virtually *nothing* is a good way to archive anything. Most materials will decay after a long period of time, and even if not, there could be a fire/breakin/flood/etc at your place of archive and you lose the media. The only really reliable way to archive something is to make 2/3 copies of it and place them in different areas.

      • 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.

      • virtually *nothing* is a good way to archive anything.

        You could use paper tape. Even if the paper tape gets brittle, you should still be able to make a duplicate paper tape with some effort.

        I have some software on paper tape and it appears to be just as reasonable today as when I wrote it 26 years ago.

        On the other hand, I haven't seen a paper tape reader in nearly that many years.

        Here's an idea for encoding your music. Build your house with two colors of bricks. Arrange the bricks in a pattern to

    • CD's are not a good way to archive anything.

      No single media of any kind is a good way to archive anything. Afterall, that's exactly what got you into trouble in the first place. If you expect the one CD to last 25 years then you've learned nothing from your tape experience. If you only have one copy of something, you have a single point of failure. Anything really important should be encoded in multiple formats written to multiple media and stored in multiple locations.

  • In my experience with thousands of CDs, I can conclude:

    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 s

  • 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
    • I'd have to put my label of approval on Verbatim as well. I've gone through 3 CD burners and used probably a dozen brands over the past 5 years. Verbatim is the only media brand that was worked on every recorder. Not only that, but I've never had a single coaster with any of the hundreds of Verbatim disks I've burned. My oldest Verbatim's are still readable after being put thourgh every torture I have to offer, and that's not something I can say for any of the others.

  • Fuji cds (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kurt Russell ( 627436 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:55AM (#7423328)
    Fuji is advertising 70-100 [fujifilmmediasource.com] years.
    • Obviously I cannot vouch for that 70 - 100 year figure :-)

      But what I can say is this.

      I've got CD-Rs that I've burned that date back to 1995. At one time or another, I've used probabaly every brand there is, and all of the no-names too.

      I've never even once had a problem with a Fuji CD-R. In fact, I have been so pleased with them that Fuji is now the only brand I will buy in both CD-Rs and DVD+RWs. I don't even bother with price comparisons between the brands on the shelf any more...my data is worth way

  • For those of us too poor for disklabels... (Score:3, Funny)

    by pimpinmonk ( 238443 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:58AM (#7423334)
    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.

  • CD Labels (Score:3, Informative)

    by locarecords.com ( 601843 ) <david AT locarecords DOT com> on Saturday November 08, 2003 @06:20AM (#7423372) Homepage Journal
    ..

    I use a lot of CD-Rs for archival purposes for music on my label, LOCA records [locarecords.com], 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.

  • my tips for keeping cdrs workin' (Score:5, Informative)

    by real_smiff ( 611054 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @06:26AM (#7423383)
    ah yes an issue close to my heart; thousands of miles from home with a portable player and home made cds that are dying :/

    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.

  • Princo CD degradation (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Fex303 ( 557896 )
    I read all that stuff about how CD-R's will degrade with a certain degree of cynicism. Until a couple of months ago when I went to play a CD I burnt about two years ago, and found it was screwed.

    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 unliste

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

  • Honesly (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BladesP9 ( 722608 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @09:17AM (#7423583)
    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.

  • Check and protect... (Score:2, Informative)

    by thrill12 ( 711899 )
    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) [coolfreepages.com] 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 [plextor.be].

    Other than that I now,
  • 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 redundant
  • 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!
  • 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 temperatu

  • CD-R lifespan (Score:3, Informative)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @01:03PM (#7424224)

    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.

  • 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.

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