[78-L] CD-DVD Lingevity: WAS CD recycling

[Don Cox]

On 16/08/2013, JD wrote:


> 
>  I have roughly about 1500 home burnt CDRs in my collection, all
> proberly stored and well cared for. The only ones to ever became
> unplayable were a cheapo brand that I purchased from a mercifully
> name-forgotten vendor. I usually bought only the better known brands,
> Memorex, TDK, Fuji, Kodak, Imation, etc. & NEVER had a problem. Then,
> some years back I found this fershluggener vendor offering 100 bulk
> packs for fifteen bucks, at least ten bucks better than the
> competition. No problem (at first) with the first three orders. Then
> the last bunch developed an at least 80 percent failure rate during
> burning. After my previous purchases the vendor bastards wouldn't make
> good because I discovered the problem a while beyond the return
> period. Recently I discovered, quite to my dismay that almost all of
> these (Peri) CDRs had become unplayable. Worse, I no longer had the
> LPs they were made from as I gave away a lot of LPs when I relocated
> five years ago.
>  Moral: When you dupe to another media, keep the original.

Or at least keep WAV files on a hard drive. 

I have been experimenting with the program EAC (Exact Audio Copy). This
does multiple reads from each block on the disk, and keeps going until
it either gets eight matching results or gives up hope.

For disks that have just a few skips and mistracks, this does seem to
work. I have got good copies from several (but not all) bronzed CDs and
from a couple with slight manufacturing faults. 

However, it takes anything up to ten hours to read a disk, so it is not
a routine solution. 
> 
>  I had a similar problem with a great many CDs (which might may
> actually be after-labeled CDRs; I haven't been able to determine
> which) that I bought from a now well-known company that specializes in
> radio programs from yesteryear. 

I find that CD-Rs from record companies are 100% guaranteed to fail. They
are made on multiple burners at the maximum write speed.

Always back up any such CD-R to a hard drive as soon as you receive it.
Or at least make a copy CD burned at 10x.

Software on CD-R is the same.
> 
>  I also have a fairly large commercially produced DVD collection and
> a much larger DVDr home brew collection and I've had only one go bad,
> a movie (apparently a commercially produced DVD and seemingly legit)
> which I bought from a super market rack for a buck. Serves me right.
> 
Pressed discs are quite different from burned discs and are much less
likely to go bad. Bronzing is the main problem and that affects only the
product of a few factories in the late 1980s.

Millenniata claim that their M-discs last for centuries. Maybe they do.
They do not make them in audio CD size, only DVD and Blu-Ray.

Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox at enterprise.net