CD-Recordable discs unreadable in less than two years

interesting... I've not yet had any sort of problem and I've discs over 5 years old. They make it sound like that's impossible.

On the other hand I have discs with music on them that have deteriorated in under a year They are kept in a cd wallet in my auto so the heat and cold are factors no doubt. I am sure it is the disks and not the player as the dropouts and skips that have developed in some are in the same place at every playing ... and new ones show up regularly now on the older ones. Guess I'll have to make backups of my backups

I keep two backups of every backup disc I have. As soon as I notice one go back I have the second one to replace the one that went bad. It's highly unlikely that both would go bad at the same time. But I've never had one go bad yet. I have had CD Rewritables go back on me though. They seem to last even shorter.

I don't speak Dutch. Do they mention how they stored these discs and under what conditions?

Yes, they say they have stored them in a closed cabinet for two years in their original packaging.

i've got princos that are over two years old easily, kept in somewhat humid conditions too. still in perfect condition

Just checked 2 CDs from 1998 - no errors.I used CDCheck. Anyone know which software they used? I use the cheapest media that will burn at my writers top speed, usually generic brands such as Silverline, GPT etc.

Software they went the hardware way. They used a high speed cd analyzer CDA-3000 from cd associates. (these things are used for fast checking disc quality in some production factories.)

I have an impression that 'older (sat 2x, 4x maybe 8x) CDs, were more stable; while newer (higher speed) CDs are less reliable over longer time periods. This is mostly simply my expereince...not based on any formal studay...

They are partly correct. I've noticed the awfully low quality of AUDIO CDs: although I am not listening to my originals as i've ripped 'em to MP3s, they kept degrading even stored in perfect conditions... ...And speaking of data CDs, well, all Cds inscribed as Delphi or DVision went unreadable (totally or partially) within one year; that's why I stopped buying that crap.

BTW, today I saw an article/ad/statement from Kruidvat (brand of the disc seen in the image) that some discs produced in 2001 were faulty and that you could send them somewhere to have the data recovered for free (if possible). The newspaper was the Volkskrant, but it probably appeared in other Dutch newspapers as well. It's on the third page of todays (20-8) Volkskrant.

Hay I have A 2 CDs Samsung CDR-74S 650mb/74min they were burnt with 2 speed max since 1999 with some old stuff and to work great... actuley it was fun to find these old stuff

What I find interesting is the majority of the comments are related to music CDs, many of which are comprised of data of rather limited value, available relatively easily to replace. I think the greater concern is for business, scientific, research or other data and information being placed on CD-R discs and the fact that manufacturers routinely provide a "warranty statement" that the media will last for 10 years or longer. Users need to read one line farther in this statement to understand that the manufacturer's warranty is limited to the cost of replacement of the media alone, and even that is limited by your ability to prove that the media was stored "under optimal conditions". My understanding of the intent of this article was that it highlights that it's critical to have a migration strategy for the most critical of data being stored on digital media, and that the media is properly stored and periodically reviewed for any signs of degradation, especially if the data stored is subject to long term retention requirements. Larry :B

My oldest backup CD-Rs are from late 1998, both still work perfectly fine. Those happen to be Sony. I also have a "generic" CD-R from around 1999, that one has problems and is mostly unreadable now. I guess you get what you pay for when it comes to storage.

same problem here my room is 29c to 35c sometimes 38c in temperature and is humid and I have several CDr that have tiny holes growing from it. some less than 1 year some of the CDs are BENQ, IMATION, ARITA, & a few under CDr-King but some of the good brads like TDK, CD-LINK,VERBATIM lasted much longer infact CD-Link lasted from (97- present ) still readable but the programs is not compatible with vista

I have purchased CDs that have "evaporated" while stored in the case. I'm transferring (as fast as I can) to hard drive most of my collections. This medium will last longer than the temporary CD/DVD medium (I hope).

I still play vinly lp's that are almost 40 years old and still sound excellent....I guess new isn't always better

National Arhive of Serbia have problem with CD who old 6 and more years. They tell that discs who older of 6 year can't read...

I did a project at work that required going back into our disc archives and when I saw how many discs were unreadable we bought a 2 TB drive to recover what we could. We're in the middle of transfer from CD/DVD to hard disk and are averaging 20% failure. Worse, Imation discs that are only three years old are failing at 75%! I've had some luck using ddrescue on our Macs to recover files, but it takes at least 8 hours to run one CD, so that'll be a long-term project.

I have cassette tapes that are still good & recorded to cd's that are bad. Can these be put on a flash drive or something else for safe storage?

There are discussions on cdfreaks.com and elsewhere of tests performed several years after this article was posted, comparing various brands of CD-R discs. Reportedly, genuine Taiyo Yuden brand discs perform best and yield the best results in long-term storage. Taiyo Yuden Co., Ltd., is the originator of the CD-R, when Philips and Sony were developing the technology in the mid-1980's. They were the first and are, apparently, still the best. Taiyo Yuden discs are available under the Taiyo Yuden brand, as well as rebranded for other companies. Also, because of Taiyo Yuden's reputation, there are counterfeits on the market, most of which embed the Taiyo Yuden code on the disc, so your burner improperly uses Taiyo Yuden parameters during the recording process, resulting in high error rates, even if the recording appears to be successful. There are a few sellers that guarantee that their Taiyo Yuden brand discs are genuine. You pay more for them, but it may be worth it for data you want to store for ten years, or longer. I've been using the genuine CD-R discs for a few years now to archive photos and audio recordings of family members, and storing them in low humidity and moderate temperature, but it's too early to tell if I'll be able to retrieve them after ten years. Floppy disc magnetic data evaporate after a while, and the mechanical and electronic components of hard drives fail from aging effects in 5-10 years, so I don't consider either of them viable as archival storage. What's left? Punched Mylar tape for data, vinyl LP records for audio and silver halide images on acid-free paper or glass plates for photos. Seriously, it looks like we are making rapid strides backwards in our quest to preserve history.