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Apparently my CDRW's have expired. What's the data retention of a cdrw anyway?

zephyrprime

zephyrprime

Diamond Member
I'm trying to dig up some old emails that I had forgot to copy over from my old HD when I upgraded. So I dig up my old CDRW backup sets. These are 3-4 years old already (time flies). So what happens? I'm rebuilding my backup catalog fine until I reach a media I can't read! No program I tried is able to read the disc. Nero reprots that the disc says it's 2.5GB big which is impossible. I can't read it on any or my 5 optical drives! So I dig up another, different set of cdrw backups of the same data from a different date. These cdrw's a different brand by the way. But there's a disc in this set that can't be read either!

No stratches on the discs by the way.

So what's going on? Has the data rentention life on my cdrw's run up? Have I been buying sucky cdrw's? Are there any good websites that talk about optical media lifetime?
 
I have one cdrw from aug 2000...it won't read..but have a cdr from nov 2000 ..still holding my data from burning with an acer 8x4x32..there were sites that did indepth media checks/tests..not sure anymore..anything I wish to keep for longer than 6 months gets put on a TY cdr at 12x and redone again in 6 mos..for my peace of mind..😉 (also constantly shifting data between harddrives..🙂)
 
Yeah CD-RW's are not very reliable. I've had some become unreadable in only a few months. One time when a CD-RW became hard to read (I could hear the drive struggling) I coppied all the data to my HD and erased it and rewrote the data to the same CD and it worked fine after that.

CD-R's don't seem to have this problem. Some of the first CD-R's I burned (back in ancient times on my Sony 2/8X, that's 2X write, 8X read!) are still readable.
 
i think its mainly the old stuff. back then the stuff was really shaky, one drive could burn it, another couldn't etc. very bad sh*t.
 
It is a problem i think with the burner, I have some that were burnt on a Acer 2x2x6 that wouldl not read in any drive but that one, I am glad I did not sell it or give it away. I just reburned them all and now I can get rid of the Acer.

Bleep
 
It's because of the nature of CD-RW discs. Heat effects them quite a bit... let them fluctuate between 95 degrees and 70 degrees for a few years and they will degrade. Re-Writing them helps because it's all fresh, newly "burned" data. I never use CDRW discs for backups I intend to use 3-4 years from now... I use them for things I may need a month or two from now... any longer than that, and I put it on a CD-R... CD-R's are so cheap, there's no reason to use CD-RW's instead. If you watch sales, you can get a 50 packs of CD-R's for free after rebates... all you end up paying is tax and postage to mail in the rebate form. Usually ends up costing about 1-5 cents per disc if you get a good sale.
 
I remember reading about life expectancy of different media. The only one I remember specifically is a regular CD, 20 years, which was the highest of the storage devices listed. I think cassettes were 2-3 years, I'm sure the music industry was reluctant to switch to a more permanent media. In order to encode something with data, it must be succeptable to some physical parameter (magnetic, light, heat), and this imparts a weakness on the media. I say at the price of a CDR, just burn it and toss it (or at least copy RW media occasionally).
 
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
i think its mainly the old stuff. back then the stuff was really shaky, one drive could burn it, another couldn't etc. very bad sh*t.
Click to expand...
I agree. Some of the old "cheap" media when CD-RW's just came out a few years back seem pretty lousy. I'm using Verbatim's 4x-10x CD-RW's and haven't had any problems with a disk yet. The brochure rates them for an archival life eceeding 100 years.

http://www.verbatim.com/products/products.cfm?sub_id=40&sub_lnk_id=49


 
The older cdrw media was often flakey in terms of longevity. The newer stuff is supposedly better, but anything I want to keep goes on decent quality cdr's. the price has come down to the point that they're rightfully regarded as disposable... Properly stored, the useful lifespan is supposedly ~20 years, iirc....
 
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