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Hi all,
at a recent photographic club meeting we were advised that files burnt to
disc
were not safe to consider them permanent!
and that they could be missing, or unreadable after around a year.
since I have backed up all my file to CD's this has got me concerned.
any thoughts please.
Mick.

"Mick." <> wrote in message
news:...
> Hi all,
> at a recent photographic club meeting we were advised that files burnt
to
> disc
> were not safe to consider them permanent!
> and that they could be missing, or unreadable after around a year.
> since I have backed up all my file to CD's this has got me concerned.
> any thoughts please.

Fred Langa has dicussed the issue of CD-R longevity several times in his
newsletter. You might find this article helpful:
http://www.informationweek.com/story...5800263&pgno=1

One of his conclusions: "....in my tests: I did discover bad CDs, but not
one--zero--was traceable to a specific brand or dye type. Instead, for me,
the only disks that failed were those that I had covered with a glue-on
paper label from a print-it-yourself CD label-maker kit."

--
Ian.

On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 22:42:58 +0100, Mick. wrote:

> Hi all,
> at a recent photographic club meeting we were advised that files burnt to
> disc
> were not safe to consider them permanent! and that they could be missing,
> or unreadable after around a year. since I have backed up all my file to
> CD's this has got me concerned. any thoughts please.
> Mick.

My thoughts? Don`t trust CD-Rs. Not for a minute. You can use high-quality
CD-Rs, limit your burning speed etc. But it is no use. You MIGHT get CDs
that actually work a while problem free. But the percentage that won`t is
IMHO too high. In fact, it is ironic that people use CD-Rs to make backups
of their harddrives. True, once it fails you lose a lot of data. But
harddrives are (again IMHO) a lot more reliable than CD-Rs.

This issue become very clear to me the hard way. I have over 500 CDs,
neatly stored and well cared for. High quality media. One year later,
about 30% is showing signs of `CD rot`, where something is bound to
happen. Symptoms are a sudden drop in reading speed, etc. 5-10% of all CDs
are partially or completely unreadable.

I have now completely banned all CDs and DVDs (except for quick transfer
from one person to the next). I have purchased a new 250 GB harddisk,
which stores everything the CDs used to store. I feel a lot safer. Out of
5 harddrives in the last 10 years, only one was behaving oddly. But it
warned me in time and no data was lost. In the same 10 years (less
actually, burners havent been around that long) I have lost dozens of CDs.
Thats good enough proof for me. Harddisks are cheaper (calculate it!),
more versatile and more reliable.

If you must use CD-Rs, ONLY use T. Yuden. If you don`t, you just pay a
premium price for branded CDs with no extra reliability.

Regards,
Willem