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CD-R burnout

As an old fart about ready for retirement, this little ditty appeared in the latest AARP magazine, dated March 2006:
"Popular CD-R and CD-RW discs used to "burn" digital photographs, videos, and songs for the long haul seem to have a crucial short-coming, says an IBM information storage expert: The discs, unlike pressed compact discs used for professionally produced music and video recordings, typically last only two to five years.

Physicist Kurt Gerecke says heat can degrade the recording surface of burned CD's, which makes the stored data "unreadable" by laser beams. His advice: Store photos and other keepsake data on magnetic tape, which can last 30 years. Or they can be archived on a computer hard drive with a high-quality disk bearing and a disk with 7,200 revolutions per minute"

What think you, Audiogonners', about this news?
sid42
nsgarch's avatar
nsgarch
2,524 posts
 
So don't store them next to the furnace or in your oven!
I have discs, both music and data, I burned as long ago as 1998, and they're as good as new.
dopogue
1,773 posts
 
Not exactly an old wive's tale, but far from the truth. Many of mine are more than 5 years old and I've never had one go bad. But I do treat them with respect. Some CDRs are promoted as "archival" discs with hundred-year lifespans. In any event, I'd rate their survival chances better than that of mag tape -- some of my mag tapes ARE unplayable.
markphd
667 posts
 
Hello Sid 42. I have reading this type of thing since the CD was invented. I think that there was a lot of variability in CD quality in the early days. Perhaps today too. As a result, deterioration has been observed. However, it may be that it was due to manufacturing and material quality more than any inherent deterioration. The best answer you may get at the moment is that nobody knows for sure whether CD's last "forever" because CD's haven't been around "forever".

I am not in the position to dispute the opinions of physicists and engineers who know more than me about such things. However, it is certainly true that poor environmental storage conditions will deteriorate anything eventually, including magnetic tape, so maybe a backup every once in a while wouldn't hurt, especially now that storage is inexpensive. I do not understand what difference a 7200 rpm hard drive makes, as opposed to 5400 rpm. As Nsgarch has suggested, you might want to keep your CDs away from extreme heat (or children with pointy objects). CDs can certainly melt or be physically damaged. I would also keep them out of direct sunlight since UV radiation does funny things to plastic type material.
brb9
33 posts
 
I have Cd's from the mid-80's that are disintregrating. Here are some fun articles:

http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=553612004

http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/bronzed.asp

Also a lot of cheap CD-R's have extremely thin protective layers over the data layer and so must be handled with extreme care.
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