Life expectancy of "burned" CDs???

BruceRPA

BruceRPA

AK Subscriber
Subscriber
I just heard "Kim Komando", a computer "Expert" on the radio mention that the life expectancy of Cd's that you burn on your PC is only 5 to 7 years. Recordings, photos and files that you have backed up or archived on Cd's that you have recorded yourself will need to be re-recorded or transferred to another format before they deteriorate and supposedly self destruct. I was not aware of that limitation and it is new news to me. Fact or fiction?
 
Register to hide this ad
yea i've heard that the dye they use, which is fragile enough to be decomposed by a pretty weak laz0r, can fade with time. it all depends on the environment in which you keep the cd's - in direct sunlight is probably not the best call. there was a thread on this a while ago, pretty much says the same thing. i find that i don't take care of burned cd's and subsequently lose them to scratches or just being lost. idk about others, but a spindle of cd's without boxes to keep them in is not the ideal situation for cd longevity.
 
There was/has been thread talk about this,something about the dye used,I guess a search is in order to track it down....by the way,I was looking thru a catalog,that had Maxell CD-R for sale in it,and they claimed their disc had a arcival life of 100 years :scratch2: ,don't know if they'll be around in 100 years to back up their claim or not,and I don't know if that has something to do with what type of recorder you have/use(does it really matter?..a burn is a burn...right?),but a boost to us wondering how long our CD-R will last,under ideal conditions?or what? Rob
 
In my experience, slower burn speeds yield a deeper burn with less errors. Knock wood, I've had good luck with my CD-R's during the past six years.
 
I have noticed on some of the cheaper CD-R's over the past few years they have begun to lose the shiny stuff inside whatever that constitutes. The ones likethis will no longer play past the missing sections and skip. I live in AZ and the heat may be a factor as I notice this mostly on my sacrificial car CDs. But you may be right about a life expectancy. I found out about the effect of time on my large R-R collection the same way.
 
Here's a link to a "white paper" on CD technology:
http://www.slais.ubc.ca/PEOPLE/students/student-projects/C_Hill/hill_libr516/print.htm

Here's a primer on disk dye types and properties:
http://www.samsungodd.com/eng/Information/ODDTech/ODDTech.asp?FunctionValue=view&no=3&type_no=1

There are about 250 brands of CDr on the market, and only 16 (or so) Manufacturers. Here's a database, I don't know how accurate or how often updated, but it's a start:
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_factories.shtml

BTW, YMMV.
 
Regarding photos, anyone hear anything of the memory chips? You can store alot of photos on 512Mb chips. I'm wondering what if you just leave them there. The chps are becoming very cheap.
 
hakka26 said:
Regarding photos, anyone hear anything of the memory chips? You can store alot of photos on 512Mb chips. I'm wondering what if you just leave them there. The chps are becoming very cheap.
Click to expand...

If one of those chips drops on the floor or is stepped on, you may lose everything.

As for CD's, 5-7 years is pure fiction. Many of mine are well past the 10-year mark and goin' strong.
 
yea, photo chips are pretty much ok because, like the CMOS on your motherboard, they are a form of non-volatile memory that tends to stay stable and just sit and sit. If you live near Los Alamos, things might be different :P
 
Well that answers that. Photos are most important to me. I do still use film quite a bit though. I think I can avoid stepping on it :D.
 
I had a CD case get wet with a mix of bought and burnt CDs in it. All the bought CDs still work fine but several of the burnt ones skip and chatter. it appears to me the quality is not as good.
 
For your photos and other data, hard drives are dirt cheap per MB compared to memory cards, they're relatively stable, and they're MO media - still the default standard for longterm storage.
 
There is a lot of excellent information here. I have a lot of reading and catching up to do.
I did poke around a bit (no pun intended!) and tried to search for previously posted information before I posed the question but I apparently didn't go quite far enough. Thanks everyone for the info and the links!
 
ozmoid said:
For your photos and other data, hard drives are dirt cheap per MB compared to memory cards, they're relatively stable, and they're MO media - still the default standard for longterm storage.
Click to expand...
Hard drives are not MO (Magneto Optical) media. They are purely magnetic media.

And while magnetic tape has proven to be a good long tern storage media for analog media, hard drives have not actually been proven for long-term digital media storage.

Anyway, please read the other threads. This problem is not nearly as bad as some people are claiming. I have several 10+ year old CDRs that read perfectly today. However, these were premium CDRs (Mitsui gold CDRs). But, I have seen cheap no-name CDRs deteriorate in as little as a year. The key is to buy quality, and keep them out of the heat. :thmbsp:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom