I heard that cheap CD-Rs don’t last for very long. Why is that, and what makes the expensive ones better?
The difference is the type of dye that is used. Generally Cd’s made in Japan are of superior quality then those made in taiwan.
They last longer with less data corruption and are generally more widely readable in CDroms/players etc.
To put things in perspective however it’s the difference between 10 years and 50 years. I doubt you’ll be keeping any of your Cdr’s for such a significant amount of time. The error rate is a problem however, and is why I only use taiyo yuden(the best dye) cd’s.
Cheap CD-R’s do scratch much more easily. That’s the cause of death of most CD’s, IMO.
Part of it is dye stability and susceptibility to damage from UV light.
I’ve noticed this; the plastic of the readable surface seems much softer on cheap bulk unbranded CDRs than on more expensive ones that come in their own jewel case, or pressed CDs.
I’ve had some problems with my Imation CD-Rs skipping when I play them in my car. (I have a 2003 Honda Accord.) They usually skip in the same place and skip just a few times before the song continues as normal. Would a different brand of CD-Rs prevent the skipping? Is there a really high-quality brand?
I buy two types of CDR.
The cheap ones are for quick transfers, testing audio mixes, music mixes for the car (if they’re cheap I don’t feel bad about chucking them in the back seat) and saving device drivers.
I have a spindle of nice CDRs for archive reasons, data back up, etc.
I’ve found some cheap CDR spindles are pretty good when it comes to abuse and storage. Normally I’ll take the first one from the pack and smack it around a bit just to see how it stands up. Some start flaking right away or just break, others take the abuse pretty good.
You can tell good CDRs from how the surface looks. If the underside is smooth and clean looking, the colour is even and it holds up well to a ball point pen on the top side, then it is better quaility.
Yamaha used to sell a cheap CDR that was on the level with Mitsui but I haven’t seen those for some time.
A new test for me is how the CD holds up to light and cold. After an old CDR I left in the car wouldn’t play, I noticed the top was slighty faded where the sun had hit it, vs. where it was covered by something.
That didn’t matter so much though, 'cause flipping it over showed the blue dye near the edges seemed to have leaked out somehow. (My best guess is that when it hit -30C the dye froze and lost whatever coherent structure it had).
I disagree that you’ll be ditching your media before 10 years. I’ve got ~5 year old CDRs lying around that I imagine I’ll still want come another 5 years. I may be moving to network storage at home, but my car is still likely to sport the old CD standard for a while.
Why are you writing on your CDs with a ball-point? Even if they can handle it, I’d think you’re tempting fate by not using a felt-tip.
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- A year or two ago there was some European group that did a study on the issue of how long consumer-grade CD-R’s remain readable. They found that some became unreadable in as little as 2-3 years, while others held out many times longer than that–and surprisingly enough, the brand name did not matter. Some of the most expensive names bombed the fastest. The only correlation they did see was that slower-writing-speed discs tended to hold their data longer than the fast-writing ones. Slashdot carried the story on this but it was a while ago, if you feel up to doing a search for it.
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- A year or two ago there was some European group that did a study on the issue of how long consumer-grade CD-R’s remain readable. They found that some became unreadable in as little as 2-3 years, while others held out many times longer than that–and surprisingly enough, the brand name did not matter. Some of the most expensive names bombed the fastest. The only correlation they did see was that slower-writing-speed discs tended to hold their data longer than the fast-writing ones. Slashdot carried the story on this but it was a while ago, if you feel up to doing a search for it.
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- Various opinions: it is generally recognized that the Mitsui gold discs last the longest, and most people use a Sharpie felt-tip marker to write on CD’s.
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- Also see here, Subject: [7-4-1] What’s the best brand of media?
http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq07.html#S7-4-1
…also note the very next question answered there, regarding media life.
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- Also see here, Subject: [7-4-1] What’s the best brand of media?
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I don’t write on CDR’s with ballpoint, but I’ve found it to be a good test of quaility. Better CDR’s can handle it while cheap ones flake and indent easy.
A report by Fred Langa a while ago (informationweek article) reported his experience. A consistent factor in CD-R’s that failed was that he had used glue-on paper label from a print-it-yourself CD label-maker kit on them. So he now recommends just identifying them with a felt-tip marker.
I read normal CD-Rs are expected to last 5 to 15 years, but some a lot more or less (I’ve had some cheap ones fail after 2 years). I use Mitsui Gold, they’re a little more expensive but I believe the government uses them for archiving and they’ve been predicted to last up to 500 years. Keep CDs in a dry, dark place, and if you really want to be overly cautious only write with the sharpie on the plastic interior.
Here is a comparison of different brands of CD-Rs.
Years ago I came into a special CD marking pen. Is there a difference between that and a sharpie?
Probably the special one is significantly higher in price.
Other than that, I doubt if there are significant differences. I know of many people who have been using standard felt tip pens for years, without problems.
What’s the difference between CD-R’s that are labeled as being for music and those that are general purpose?
None whatsoever, except the ones labeled for music cost more because there has been a levy applied to them to cover the implied cost of copyright infringement. They have a code in the bar code near the label that is read by a standalone CD recorder that tells it that it’s an “approved” disc. Non-encoded discs do not have this code and the machine will reject them. OTOH, you can use either kind in a computer.
Often, CDRs marked specifically for ‘audio use’ are simply better quality (and therefore generally more expensive than generic data CDRs - very often they also have a ‘silver’ recording surface (as opposed to one that appears dark blue or something) and this can make the difference between whether or not they will work in some older CD players.
Years ago, I picked a random felt tip out of my pen drawer, and used it to label a data backup CD. Following a crash a year later, I pulled out the CD, only to find that the ink had corroded the aluminum coating. The inside of the o’s and a’s actually fell off when I picked up the disk.
Some pen inks are acidic, and will ruin your CD’s.