Deteriorating CD/RWs

[Exit]

I have had about seven of my oldest CD/RWs deteriorate where the music starts skipping grooves or repeating. None had any visible scratches or other damage. I’ve used a variety of CD/RWs including off-brands. I can’t tell which brand(s) they are because at the time I was using disc labels. I’ve since changed to Sharpie markers. I think the life of off-brand CD/RWs may not be as long as projected. I can’t remember the year CD/RWs became popular but I am guessing that these CD/RWs are about 15 years old. Has anybody else experienced this problem? I am going through my entire CD collection listening to each CD/RW to verify they are still good. It is a big hassle.

 

[stratman]

There was a thread running not too long ago on the same topic, detiriorating CDs. A good number of my CDs are from the very begining of the CD revolution back in 82-83, anyway, they're fine, no CD "rot", no skipping so I guess the problems lie with your media.

 

[fmw]

I suggest you rip them to a hard drive and then back them up. If you want portable media then simply copy out new ones to new CD-RW discs.

 

[mustang_steve]

CD recordable media are known for their fragileness, especially in relation to heat/cold. I highly reccomend you make ISO backups of all of any such media owned to a hard drive, so you can burn new copies in the future when these discs do fail.

Pressed CDs (like store bought albums) tend to be incredibly resilient, it's just the recordable media that suffer a relatively short lifespan.

 

[pzaur]

The life span of early CD-R/RW discs is incredibly poor. I've been doing some research on DVD-Rs because I've had a very important disc go bad. The important thing to find a good disc is to find out which factory or factories make the best discs and go from there. Here are two sites worth looking into:

CD-R Quality

DVD-R Quality

The Taiyo Yuden brand is probably your best bet for quality when it comes to both types of discs. Two places to find it are Supermediastore.com and Meritline.com

It also looks as if Supermediastore.com is selling monoprice cables...

-pat

 

[awaker]

I have heard the speed has something to do with it,slower the better.I'm still not sold on "external harddrives" yet.It may be costly but I back up everything on dvd.when i get anything new i put it on a dvd so i can rerecord it later

 

[mustang_steve]

The reason for slower writes is a longer burn period...which increases the odds of a good burn. This sometimes allows a bad burner (or good burner with a bad brand of discs) to burn things it cannot at full speed.

 

[rnatalli]

Definitely rip them to hard disk as others have suggested. You don't want to lose what you have.

 

[astrodon]

Hard disks fail too after a time

Please keep in mind that hard disks fail as well. If they experience heavy use, then they may have a lifetime less than 5 years. (I have replaced many a hard drive in my computers over the years.) As such, always make back ups of hard disks too every month or so, either to a second external USB hard disk, or to DVD-Rs (though this 2nd option can get costly).

 

[Rob Babcock]

The quality & life expectancy of CD-R/RW's varies dramatically. Some of the very cheap brands will fade away within a couple of months! My experience has been best using discs that utilize Phthalocyanine, such as Mitsui. While I have many discs from the early days of CD-R that still play just fine, nearly all my early Memorex discs have already failed, some spectacularly (eg delamination/splitting of the layers).

Mitsui discs seem to me to be the best, especially the Gold ones. Taiyo-Yuden have also worked well for me. Of course, check back with me around 2025 and we'll see how they really hold up!

 

[sparky77]

Just to clarify, did you use cd-r's or cd-rw's. Cd-rw's tend to fail a lot sooner and drives tend to have a harder time reading them because the burning method creates round bubbles in the dye layer instead of square crystal shapes. If it's stuff you intend to keep rather than rewrite over, make copies to to cd-r's. Verbatim has been the brand I've had the most luck with for cd-r's, and 99% of them are made by taiyo yuden. You can verify the manufacturer of a disc by downloading the little smartburn program from Lite-On.

 

[MDS]

It's practically impossible to be sure which manufacturer a particular CD-R was sourced from as they all change from time to time depending on price. TY is generally considered the best but just because one brand was using it for their discs doesn't mean every batch will be sourced from TY.

The only real generalization you can make that is accurate is that Cyanine based discs have lower reflectivity than Pthalocyanine or AZO based discs and often will not play in older CD players.

One thing from the quoted article that should be clarified is the fact that some discs weren't good for audio. Buying a CD-R that is labeled 'Music CD-R' means absolutely nothing. That designation simply means that the disc has a code embedded in the ATIP (absolute time in pre-groove) area that indicates that the manufacturer has paid a fee to compensate artists. A stand-alone home recorder will not burn to any disc that does not have such a code. A computer burner will burn to any disc.

Still it is better to avoid the cheapest CD-Rs because you do run the risk that they are not sourced from a disc maker with a reliable track record. Quality does cost money.

 

[mustang_steve]

Please keep in mind that hard disks fail as well. If they experience heavy use, then they may have a lifetime less than 5 years. (I have replaced many a hard drive in my computers over the years.) As such, always make back ups of hard disks too every month or so, either to a second external USB hard disk, or to DVD-Rs (though this 2nd option can get costly).

Very true, this is why I reccomend use of an air-cooled external 5-1/4" USB drive bay to hold the backup drive, and only having the drive powered up for back-up or restore purposes. I do this myself, and even back when I had to use paralell port drive enclosures, I was seeing exceptional lifespan.

I have an old 200gb IDE hard drive that still has backups of some of my programs, how's that for longevity?

Keep in mind I do listen to the drives and if anything even hints at being wonky (bearing noise, etc), the drive gets replaced asap.

 

[pzaur]

Another place to purchase media

gotmedia.com

-pat