How To Verify CD-R Data Retention Over Time?
Found on Slashdot on Wednesday, 05 November 2008
I've recently had two CD-Rs reported to me as faulty which are just 3 years old. This is worrying - I suspect the failure rate for this batch could be 10%.
I'd like to measure decay over time in my environment with my media and my other variables; and I expect others would too.
Drop CD's for backups already. They are a terrible and unreliable medium. Not to mention using them is awfully expensive and time-consuming. Let's for example buy a spindle of 100 Taiyo Yuden CD's which are praised everywhere. Let's say you'll find them for $20. That spindle provides roughly 70GB storage. Now buy an external 1TB WD harddrive which you can get for around $160. This is more than 14 times the storage, but you won't pay $280 like you would for CD's. Not to mention you can access your data way faster and you don't have to search through 1400 CD's (and the drive also takes up less space).