Checked Your CD-Rs Lately?
Found on Techarp on Sunday, 19 July 2009
According to manufacturers, CD-Rs should last for decades. Some even quoted an upper limit of 120 years based on accelerated aging tests! That sure is a long time, isn't it? But will CD-Rs really last that long?
Of the corrupted CD-Rs, many of them only had a few files corrupted, but two of the CD-Rs were completely unreadable. Neither one of the two CD/DVD drives we used could even recognize the CD-Rs, much less read anything off them.
It should be pretty obvious by now - CD-Rs don't last forever. Although manufacturers may quote lifespans of decades in length, they are unlikely to last more than a few years. Our simple test showed that even when stored properly, CD-Rs that were just 7-9 years old were failing at a significant rate.
It baffles me that people still use CD/DVD. I used CDs too when HD space was expensive, but learned my lesson when trying to get the data on them back. Although stored in a dark place with constant temperature and well protected from any dust, there had been a lot of failures. Some disks just had a few I/O errors, others failed completely because the layer oxidized at the edges. After that, I trashed all CDs (a blowtorch is a fast way to destroy everything before throwing them away). I don't even have a CD drive connected anymore and never missed it; and that was years ago. Why would anybody bother with that useless medium when it's cheaper to get another (external) harddrive? Not to mention it's faster and you don't need to search through a pile of CDs to find what you want.