Report: CD-Rs Are not Reliable

[Guest]

In other news, Michael Jackson died.

 

[Netherscourge]

Nothing is guaranteed to last. NOTHING.

 

[thegh0st]

[citation][nom]Wayoffbase[/nom]The only real way to safeguard data is to chisel it into stone, and only a fraction of that is going to survive.[/citation]
not if you sent the rock to the moon! 😛 well barring any space collisions with the moon in the right spot.

 

[stromm]

HDD's are far less reliable than burnable disks. Think about how many HDDs you've lost vs. optical disks. If you RAID the drives, what happens when your motherboard dies?

HDD's are an intermediate solution. Optical disks are a much better solution, but you should copy disks to new disks every so often.

I've been using burnable disks since 1997. I always do a verify. Anything really important I burn two copies and dupe them every two years. I've tried all sorts of brands and found that the usually start having problems after three years, I'd say %60 of the disks. Burning at higher speeds tend to be more of a problem. I don't notice much variance between burner brands (sony, teac, liteon, samsung, etc.) nor disk brands.

 

[tayb]

Optical media is not reliable. There is nothing "next generation" about Blu-ray or HD-DVD besides the higher resolution. Everything else about the format and all optical formats sucks.

 

[tayb]

[citation][nom]stromm[/nom]HDD's are far less reliable than burnable disks. Think about how many HDDs you've lost vs. optical disks. If you RAID the drives, what happens when your motherboard dies?HDD's are an intermediate solution. Optical disks are a much better solution, but you should copy disks to new disks every so often. I've been using burnable disks since 1997. I always do a verify. Anything really important I burn two copies and dupe them every two years. I've tried all sorts of brands and found that the usually start having problems after three years, I'd say %60 of the disks. Burning at higher speeds tend to be more of a problem. I don't notice much variance between burner brands (sony, teac, liteon, samsung, etc.) nor disk brands.[/citation]

Uh, I've lost maybe a handful of hard drives over the past 10 years from normal use whereas I've probably had 50+ optical discs scratched or broken over the same time period. Maybe optical discs last longer if you wear microfiber gloves every time you touch them and treat them like infants but under normal use I would much rather have a hard drive. I throw my flash drive around all over the place and only get new ones if I need more space. I'll drag it behind my car on the way to work then plug it in to get my files, good luck with an optical disc.

 

[lowguppy]

Yeah, I've known this for several years. Some of course hold up better than others, but they're clearly not an archival quality medium.

 

[rooket]

Lol no kidding. CDRs are a bad way to backup your data, I thought everyone knew this by now. Tape is still considered the best afaik. I have a lot of cdrs that I still need to copy back off because they are real old, but none give me errors that I've tried out so far clear back to 1996 or 1997.

 

[antilycus]

There are too many variables missing from this arguement. What was the storing conditions, was there a tempature change? What was the media stored in, jewel case or sleeve? Since a CDR is just microscopic bumps on a magnetic field, anything for moisture to daylight could've warped the discs. I would take this article with a grain of salt. My windows 98 (burned) disc, just worked last week and its over 9 years old and on a TDK media platter.

 

[mdillenbeck]

Customer: the data is gone from my CD-R and it has a lifetime warranty, I want my data back

Company: sorry, sir, we only guaranteed the disk be there, not the data - and anyway, we meant the lifetime of a fruit fly, not you.

=================================================================

DATELINE 58BC - one of the worst losses of backed-up data every... the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

=================================================================

Those that stated the best system for backup data is replication and over the internet are on the right track. Remember, there is no such thing as file and forget - but with the internet, you are more susceptible to having your information compromised.

 

[Guest]

I have never found optical to be reliable. I have many CD-Rs from the 90's that read perfect and some from a couple of years ago that are not.

The largest factor I have seen is the burner themselves. CD-Rs and DVD-Rs that were burned on one machine have lasted for years. Some burned on another are not readable 10 minutes later on a different drive.

I have looked at the burned surface using a microscope of identical media, identical iso files burned by different drives. There was a wide variation in the alteration of burned surface. Those that a lightly burned appear to have the highest failure rate.

Until recently, the cost of magnetic drives were not on par with optical media. Plus interchange with other machines is limited. This is a large advantage of optical media. As technology advances, interfaces have changed or tape drives not being compatible with older media.

The one thing not mentioned so far that I have used successfully is breaking up files in small sets using WIN-RAR or PAR and having high redundancy and burning them twice. Thus 80% of the disk might be unreadable, but the data is still recoverable.

 

[nachowarrior]

this is VERY old news. I've been telling people for years that cd's have an average shelf life of about 7-10 years. Hence the reason i don't rely on cd's for backup of music or movies. heat and moisture variations are the worst.

 

[ravenware]

It happens, I have pulled out 3-4 yrold discs from storage that have only been used once before and they have failed to read.

The tops of the discs seem to get weathered over time, not sure if that has anything to do with it.

 

[ravenware]

[citation][nom]doomtomb[/nom]CDs suck ass. Flash solid state memory is where it's at in terms of reliability but even there it could be improved...[/citation]
Nope they will eventually loose data.