Think your recorded cd data is 100% safe? Guess again...and I'm not joking

[cage47]

I've had the same Memorex CD-RW for the past few years and my dad has the same model that he bought brand new in 97. We've gone through many cd's. a few cd-rw's and piles of cd-r's. Thing is I found out today (I had heard about something like this but have not experienced it myself) that cd's, specifically cd-rw's have a limited shelf life. I mean they don't give out like floppies but they are limited. The recording media is not quite as durable as a cd-r. I have read that cd-r's have an approximate lifespan of 15 years (give or take) Well these cd-rw's that we've got that are going bad were the originals that came in the packages with the new cd-rw cdrom. The recording media on the outer edge is flaking off and making the cd-rw's unusable. Turns out my dad's cdrw cdrom, the little belt in it broke and he's going to replace it. But when he opened it up he was wondering what all those little silvery flakes were that came falling out. Looking like cassette tape ribbon only finer. As I was telling him on the phone about what I had found I was holding my suspect cdrw and flakes of the recording media was pealing off. I'm being completely serious and not crying "the sky is falling." I've got two cd-rw's now that this is happening to. Both the same age, old 650mb cd-rw's. ANd you can tell. Look at how the recording media is adhered to cd-r's and then look at cd-rw's. The cd-r's are more durable feeling. And the more you handle them the worse the flaking gets. Makes a person mindful of how they handle their digital archive. I think from now on I'm sticking with cd-r's. With them so cheap now why the hell not?

And I'm in no way influenced by the cd industry or have some vested intrest in using cd-r's. I just think this is something important for any cd burners out there.

[Timothy L. Miller]

This is the reason that they don't suggest using CD-RW's to back up information, or store it for any length of time. I use CD-RW's pretty much only for information taht I'm going to be using for a couple days, then erasing. My RW's probably get burned once a week, and so far, they've usually lasted about 1 year each. I've used multiple different companies, in different burners, and it's been fairly consistent. Of course, if you use them less, they will last longer, but still, they do indeed have a very limited life span.

[mrBen]

My Debian 2.2r2 disks (first distro I paid money for) had the silver coming off them pretty much from day one :( When I took the 3rd disk out of the paper sleeve, a big chunk of silver stayed attached to the sleeve.

I guess it's just a matter of what you use them for, but CD-Rs are so cheap now, that they're easily disposable.

[Icarus]

CD-RWs can only be erased so many times...every time you erase/write to them you are burning off a layer of disk. An erase takes of a huge chunk of it...

Frankly, I'm suprised you able to use the same one for 5 years without running into this earlier :eek:

[cage47]

Well the one I used mostly didn't really get heavy use until 2 years ago. Before that I might have used it once every few months. The otherone sat for 2 years without use and then I only used it once in a while. I was using them as floppies to make backups of my /usr and /home dirs. But this last year the main one got a lot of use. And since getting the cdrw in linux going I've been using it to test first before I tested on the cd-r's. Funny, that cd never wanted to work in linux but the other did, once.

[Icarus]

I think the CD-RW manufacuters recommend to only use them (complete erase and re-write) 5 times before they become 'unstable'. I have had some of these for a while and most of them are still in the wrapping, while 2 or 3 have been used once or twice. I prefer to use CD-R, they are so cheap now, and if I don't want them any more...landfill 'em :)

[Timothy L. Miller]

Originally posted by mahdi
I think the CD-RW manufacuters recommend to only use them (complete erase and re-write) 5 times before they become 'unstable'. I have had some of these for a while and most of them are still in the wrapping, while 2 or 3 have been used once or twice. I prefer to use CD-R, they are so cheap now, and if I don't want them any more...landfill 'em :)

There's also the fact that CD-R's can be written so much faster. The fastest burners out there now do what, 48x cd-r, but still only 12x CD-RW? That's another reason that I usually use CD-R instead of RW.
Even my burners (24/12/40 on one, 16/10/40 and 12/8/32 on the other 2) have a VERY noticeable difference from the R speed and RW speed. I ended up giving away most of my RW's just because I got tired of waiting for them to burn.

[iawix]

I think CD-RW's use organic material, don't they?