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R/E/P => R/E/P Archives => Reason In Audio => Topic started by: Lars Ekman on February 05, 2005, 07:45:13 PM

Title: CDR archiving... not any good?
Post by: Lars Ekman on February 05, 2005, 07:45:13 PM
While reading the ever-entertaining political blog What Really Happened I stumbled across the following URL:

http://bfarber.com/index.php?showtopic=5907

It had the following comment in the blog:

Quote:

When I moved into CD-R burners and disks for archiving, I checked with the company that made the blanks and was told to expect a lifespan of 50 years with "proper care". Proper care in my case is a fire safe in a cool, dry, and dark place.
This morning I went to recover some music my wife recorded to CD-R 5 years ago, and EVERY SINGLE DISK from 5 years ago is unreadable.

I am heartsick that my wife's music is lost. The particular recording was irreplaceable.

I am angered that I have apparently lost a great deal of archived data relevent to my business because I trusted the disk makers when they claimed a 50 year lifespan.

...



I myself had a similiar experience reading back some old CDRs made 5 years ago. They were not music but hard drive back-ups containing, among other things, text files. Some files were unreadable, and some text files contained strange switches of characters in certain words (this can, from my somewhat limited understanding of digital, be due to that the bits of certain bytes have switched.)

Anyone else had bad experiences with CDRs? My oldest music CDR master is from 3 years ago, and is still playable.
Title: Re: CDR archiving... not any good?
Post by: Bob Olhsson on February 05, 2005, 08:17:05 PM
I've heard about quite a few problems. Suits want a figure on paper but the truth is that there is no way to reallytest longevity. The sticky shed problem and the lack of problems with tape from the 1950s are perfect examples of testing proving utterly meaningless.