The Dutch PC-Active magazine has done an extensive CD-R quality test. For the test the magazine has taken a look at the readability of discs, thirty different CD-R brands, that were recorded twenty months ago. The results were quite shocking as a lot of the discs simply couldn't be read anymore:
The tests showed that a number of CD-Rs had become completely unreadable while others could only be read back partially. Data that was recorded 20 months ago had become unreadable. These included discs of well known and lesser known manufacturers. It is presumed that CD-Rs are good for at least 10 years. Some manufacturers even claim that their CD-Rs will last up to a century. From our tests it's concluded however that there is a lot of junk on the market. We came across CD-Rs that should never have been released to the market. It's completely unacceptable that CD-Rs become unusable in less than two years. On the image you can see the exact same CD-R. On the left you see the outcome of our tests done in 2001. On the right you see the same CD-R in 2003. The colours indicate the severeness of the errors in the following order; white, green, yellow and red whereas white indicates that the disc can be read well and red indicates that it cannot be read. |
For those of you who are interested, the original Dutch article can be found here and in the September issue of PC-Active. Please discuss this subject in our Media Forum.
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Source: PC-Active
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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.)
...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.
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
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
