CD-Rs fade over time?

[johnlink]

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc, in the section entitled "Recordable CD", I just read the following:

CD-R recordings are permanent. ... Over time however (estimated to be about 5 years) the dye will fade causing read errors and data loss until the reading device cannot recover with error correction methods.

Is it true that CD-Rs fade over time? If so, they are obviously not the secure archive medium that I thought they were.

John Link

[Andy Krehm]

Originally Posted by johnlink

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc, in the section entitled "Recordable CD", I just read the following:

CD-R recordings are permanent. ... Over time however (estimated to be about 5 years) the dye will fade causing read errors and data loss until the reading device cannot recover with error correction methods.

Is it true that CD-Rs fade over time? If so, they are obviously not the secure archive medium that I thought they were.

John Link

I wouldn't trust them long, long term but, when asked to, I am still able to restore almost every one of my masters that were archived to CD-Rs. We started archiving to disc in 1998, so not too bad. The discs were various brand names and they all seem to work equally well. We now use DVDs for masters and I personally haven't had any problem restoring any of them.

However, our recording department has had a few problems with restoring DVDs and I'm not sure why but I think they were using no-name brands. We now run two of the each and only use Taiyo Yuden.

[Rob Murray]

I like this post, and am curious to hear people who might know more about the reliability of certain media. As far as CD Id always heard it was some of the early CDRs that hd that problem, but it had suposedly been addressed by manufacturers. I had also been told that DVDs are a poor backup medium, something to do with the tighter packing of data etc. How much of this is true and how much is B.S?

[16/44.1]

Originally Posted by johnlink

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc, in the section entitled "Recordable CD", I just read the following:

CD-R recordings are permanent. ... Over time however (estimated to be about 5 years) the dye will fade causing read errors and data loss until the reading device cannot recover with error correction methods.

Is it true that CD-Rs fade over time? If so, they are obviously not the secure archive medium that I thought they were.

John Link

I have a ty cdr recorded in 1992!!!!!
Still perfect after abusing it.....
Since 1997 i burn cdr's myself, gold discs.
These recorded discs are still perfect.
500+

[arf]

Mitsui Golds are supposedly spec'd at 100 years. They don't score as well as Taiyos on a C1/C2/CU test, which may something about not taking the significance of getting the lowest scores on such a test too far.

[Dr.Wu]

AFAIK CD-RW use a different approach to store the data and have a much longer lifecycle than CD-Rs.

[12th & Vine]

Originally Posted by johnlink

Is it true that CD-Rs fade over time? If so, they are obviously not the secure archive medium that I thought they were.

John Link

It depends. Here is a link to the National Institute Of Standards & Technology's Digital Data Preservation Program Guide:

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/carefordisc/

It's worth the read if you're interested in this topic.

Interestingly, the NIST notes that few, if any, life expectancy reports have been published by independent labs ... in other words, most tests are done by the manufactures themselves on their own products. How they usually do this is summarized in the Guide.

[Roland]

I started providing CDR's to customers about 17 years ago, back in the days when the discs cost £40 each trade!

The problem has become that various dye's have been used with varying degree's of sucess and I have seen CDR's that "lose" their data in about 5 years and I've also got CDR's from when I started out making them, that are still good. I remember all the claims that they would last 100 years, but being the most they could do was some atempt at an accelerated aging test you have to take these claims with a large pinch of salt. My own observation are that light seems to degrade disc's, but not all discs seem to be equal in this respect, I also suspect that discs with lighter dye's don't seem to hold up as well as ones with darker dyes, however I have no technical data to back this up so this is purely anacedotal. I would sugest that if people are looking for guaranteed storage they look at other solutions, CDR's should be good for a few years, but they don't seem to be a reliable long term storage solution.

Regards


Roland

[PhilRanger]

Originally Posted by Roland

... I remember all the claims that they would last 100 years, but being the most they could do was some atempt at an accelerated aging test you have to take these claims with a large pinch of salt.

Remember also these adds where they would scratch a cd surface and still say it works perfectly. Sometimes you barely see the scratches on a commercial music CD and they skip like Hll...

[the russian]

I have noticed the visible and audible effects of unkempt cd-r disks over time. Interesting thread...

[jamesp]

There seems to be a great deal of mis-informed opinion on this subject - including that wikipedia entry. I've taken the liberty of editing it to match the experience of most of us who have used CD-R for a while. Oddly enough the actual CD-R entry is much better.

Many badly made and badly stored CD-R's have short lifetimes but properly made and properly stored CD-R's will last at least 15 years (because that's how old the oldest CD-R's are) and probably much longer. Taiyo Yuden quote a lifetime of 80 years for their discs while Mitsui's archival grade discs have a quoted lifetime of 200 years. The accelerated ageing tests that I've seen agree with these lifetimes in a comparitive sense although we can never be sure of the absolute values.

CD-RW discs have a shorter lifespan than CD-R although very few should have gone bad by now if they have been well treated.

Cheers

James.

[jdg]

Originally Posted by arf

Mitsui Golds are supposedly spec'd at 100 years.

i have a tough time believing claims like this.
do they have a time machine? did michael j fox bring some CDRs back with him and forget to bring them back?

i have 10yr old CDRs that work OK. and when they dont, i try another CDROM and it works.

[16/44.1]

Originally Posted by arf

Mitsui Golds are supposedly spec'd at 100 years. They don't score as well as Taiyos on a C1/C2/CU test, which may something about not taking the significance of getting the lowest scores on such a test too far.

As long as the C1/C2 errors are correctable i will stay with gold discs.
Error checking with a plextor frome time to time,
print the report and compare with the previous one...........

[DontLetMeDrown]

I've been burning CDs since 1998 and I will occasionally run into some that no longer work. I tend to notice problems with unprinted CDRs. I have also had problems with some old TDK & Memorex discs. Audio discs seem to be less of a problem than data discs.