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Do Burned CDs Have a Short Life Span?


cobaka

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well yah,

one cd i made with 3d files on it....

put into cd rom after a format, went to extract files from disc was was working fine then.......... copying frooze and everything was slowing down as it looked for disc.

The disc was cheap and crappy so it cracked from the middle to the edge in 3 places .............. dunno how

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YES, they absolutely do.

Ive done a lot of research on this issue because i need to archive lots of big files. I also had some unreadables cd's whom were burned about 3-4 years ago.

The detoriation rely on a couple of factors, but THEY WILL. Some tips for steady burning:

- Choose at least a medium quality CD.

- Set your writing speed low (like 12x, it will burn, like, a deeper grove which last longer)

- Close all other applications to avoid buffer overrun

- Set your desktop on a steady underground, do not bump into it

- NEVER TOUCH CD WITH BARE HANDS (acid) nor write on it

- Store them in a dark place under a constant (preferable low) temperature and low humidity

- Do not read them very often, use them only for long term back up/archival purposes

A better, more reliable, way for storing are plain (or external) hard disks. It seems more expensive, but it is not. Compare the price of medium quality cds to harddisks in MB/$ (and take into account that you will never burn 700MB to a cd, always less). Besides more reliability, its way way faster in storing (write speeds) and the data is better accessible.

I have no experience with tape streamers, but in the "professional" archivers world they seem still very popular.

Edited by BlueRose_76
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Tape might last longer but I would guess that it's easier to use hard drives and the drivers and software for hard drives probably last longer than tapes.

Not to mention tape is alot slower, as it is linear, and magnetic.

Better to use CD's and burn important stuff slower for a higher quality recording, and if necessary, discs are cheap enough that you can make more than one copy.

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I like Verbatim and 3M myself. I've had bad luck with Memorex and Maxell.

I find that the slower you burn though, at least in my experience, the longer the disc will last, and the more "abuse" it can take.

The deeper and clearer the track, the easier for the laser to read.

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Memorex CDRs were kinda 50/50 they worked fine (Even survived spills and scratches) but sometimes i attempted to burn something and it damaged the disc and everything that WAS on it that worked. None of my cds have broken other than stepping on them or anything though, maybe one just stopped working but i had alot of scratches on them.

Verbatim is nice though.

TDK i picked up at dollar general and got 15 CD-Rs and they work fine.. and i only spent 8 dollars and if one malfunctions i can put the stuff on a new one

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