Indestructible CD's (NOT)

From the 'Whats new at ZIFF DAVIS' E Letter

CDs and DVDs Deteriorate After All

And I used to think my CDs and DVDs would out-last me. Apparently that's not true. It seems that these wonder discs actually deteriorate pretty quickly. It seems now that these optical discs just aren't as permanent as we thought. If you rely on CDs and DVDs, better read our report--and think about making backups of your backups.
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This is a bit of a bummer for those of us, who were sold on the idea of 'indestructible' media.
Me, I've put almost all my record collection to CD, thinking that the vinyl, was at last, safe.

The article is here :-


http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1585525,00.asp


[edit] W00t - 175 posts, me makes it to MEMBER - does this mean I can apply for that haxxor encoder ring now ? :D [/edit]

Yea I think 70 years is about the period that CD manufacturers guarentee there disks for..

oh well ill probably have scratched it to death by then anyway!

i2c

There was some things said about labelling them too recently.... The stuff in the 'glue" that sticks the labels to the CD increases the rate of degradation. As long as they still last 7+ years it shouldn't be an issue.....

Hi Foxy,

"Good" stuff should last 50 years...........but yes, the stuff does deteriorate, and more rapidly than you think............even less justification for the prices that recording companies think they can charge?

:mad:

What is the real worry, in a few years they will find something to replace them anyway. Gotta keep upgrading technology. Plus it keeps us spending our hard earned money.

Never thought they were indestructible. If you take care of them, they should last a long time. Don't leave them in your vehicle, and the guy said his cabin had major swings in temperature. It does tick me off about some of the dvd cases, when you push on the button holding the dvd, it will not release.
dopeydadwarf has it correct though, just wait and something new will come out.

I used to trade burned cds through the mail about 3 years ago... All of them have poor listening quality now.

ahem...memorex.

Actually I've noticed that quite a while ago. I have some CD's I've burned about 5 years ago which are not read anymore. And this friend of mine has even an original Michael Jackson CD (which cost him aprox 50 bucks) that got fungi all over in less than 5 years. So, even if you take very good care of your CD's they can still get deteriorated in a short space of time anyway.

Well if you have fungi on it, that is an all together different problem. I know that not all cds are made the same and some will not last as long as others. Its just a crap shoot on what you get.

I remember the tomorrows world where they introduced CDR.

It explained that you could spread jam on them and run over them on your bike.

////Off to find Tape.

Hey Mark, I was just gonna say about that tommorows world program, they showed a clip of it on TV the other night, I think its a bit of false advertising...

Did anyone else read about how spilling beer over an audio CD can lead to bacteria growing and changing the pitch at which the music plays? was quite insteresting, some german DJ was spilling beer on his CD and then a few weeks later because of the build up of bacteria it altered the sound..

i2c

I had left my CD case filled with CD-Rs in my car (2002 w/ no leaks) and I pulled my CD's out a couple months later to grab a couple tracks and some of the CDs had the black specks that seemed to have eaten through the material. It kind of looked like mildew or something like that. I would also like to say, these CD's did not have labels on them.

ITG: I have a bunch of CDs in my car. I switch them out frequently... they are all CDRs and none are in cases. I just throw them in the middle console. Besides some scratches... I've never had a problem with them. They have no labels except for the title and ar****t written with a sharpie.

Doen't matter anyway... I can always just make a new copy.
I went through the painstaking trouble of ripping all my CDs to my HD. Well.. there are some that I didn't do... but oh well. If my CDs fail, I make another copy. If my HD fails... I go to my "offsite backup" next door and copy them back to new HDs again.

What about those magneto-optical drives? Last I saw about WORM drives, they were guaranteed for 50 years. Don't know about home use, haven't seen any units for that. Anybody know of a home solution using a magneto-optical drive?

With CD-Rs being so cheap, I use them to transfer sensitive data :), and then melt them down. I don't know much about using CD-RWs for it. IIRC, they use an amorphic solid that when heated to melting point, turns to liquid and doesn't reflect the laser. When rapidly cooled, it doesn't return to its solid state. Then, to make it reflective, the spot is held at melting point and the temperature is slowly backed down to resolidify the stuff. It seems this would be more secure than using a hard drive, but i don't know much about forensics on that and trying to get information off of a CD-RW that's been returned to a null state. CD-Rs depend on a photo sensitive dye, so, when the laser hits the dye, the dye goes from transparent to green (or some other color, depending on laser AFAIK). After heating or excessive exposure to sunlight, the CD-Rs undyed parts start to become less transparent, which 'degrades' the data. I don't trust melting down CD-RWs though, not sure what byproducts there will be with the funky metal being melted. I'd recommend storing data or music in a CD-RW as opposed to a CD-R as it's not susceptible to degrading because of heat or light, unless you expose it to extremely high temperatures or course =p

I'd really like to have a magneto-optical solution for my machine as I'm not too thrilled about using tape backup or CD-Rs. If anyone knows of a home MO drive (or cheap commercial one that's not in a massive disk array), I'd very much like to learn about where I can get it.

I am actually surprised CDs are still around. The technology was released commercially in like 1979 or so and adopted as a formal standard by the infamous Matsushita Corp in 1981.

The advantage in long term archiving is the digital nature of the technology. As long as it is copied avery few years the image is intact with no degredation of the original.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by FlamingRain
What about those magneto-optical drives? Last I saw about WORM drives, they were guaranteed for 50 years. Don't know about home use, haven't seen any units for that. Anybody know of a home solution using a magneto-optical drive?

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I use those at work. Those are some big suckers... The optical storage library is huge too...

I couldn't imagine spending that kind of money on a home solution...

Magneto Optical came out around 1986. It never really took off because people gravitated towerd rewritable standards that were cheap like phase-changed based madia such CD-RW, (my opinion). The issue with long term archiving isn't JUST media degradation. It is the ability to obtain technology to read it. In 50 years your Mag based archive could be useless because the ability to read the media isn't around. If the goal is only short term storage, it's ok. Any rewritable media is subject to a breakdown in the cohesiveness of the stored data in subject to external magnetic flux around the office. Of course they are built to withstand normal activity and are not easily affected under normal conditions. It's cool technology but the comparable storage relations to CD-RW and the cost accosiated with it, make it superceded in my opinion. Considering they both store about the same amount of data and have similar retention times before breakdown.

well mp3 players are a considerable solution to the future. I have an mp3/CD player in my car...and about 5 CDs with 200+ songs in them...they're organized in folders and the mp3 player will allow me to switch from one folder to the other. I used to throw the CDs around my car before too....but now I'll just leave one in there and listen to it. With over 200 songs in it...I doubt i'll get tired of it anytime soon. Also...I keep most of my music in a separate hard drive, and on my laptop at times when I'm outside and catch a hotspot or something. I wouldn't be surprised if instead of using optical media such as CDs, or even magnetic media, we will indeed be using a more digital approach to the matter using memory chips? if they make a USB port for car stereos...you can use an USB FLASH DRIVE and use it as you would a CD...

just a few cent :)

Quote:

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Considering they both store about the same amount of data and have similar retention times before breakdown.

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I find that they have about the same storage as a DVD... well, kinda. This media stores on both sides... a total of 5.2GB... so about 2.6GB on each side. We have both WORM and rewritable cartridges...

http://www.storage.ibm.com/media/diskettes_optical/

From my knowledge of ROM, there are a few basic classes including ROM, PROM, EPROM, and EEPROM. The kind in mp3 players is EEPROM IIRC. What kind of degradation is this subject to? I imagine magnetic fluxes in the env. would effect it just like it would effect a hard drive. Anybody got numbers on the lifespan of an EEPROM chip and the data on it?

The only problem with using this as a storage medium is that it's more expensive than the alternatives.

true...but they are getting cheaper by the day...I remember when a 32MB USB drive was $60-$100, but now I bought 3 128MB ones for $20 a piece...and they're tiny. 128MB will hold 36 mp3s (Avg 3.5mb/song). But as we continue making even more advanced chips...you'll be able to hold 1 gig of songs for an affordable price. Would you pay $100 for a re-writable media storage which would hold 285 songs with the option of storing other types of data in there for convenience?

I'd rather buy a flash memory card reader/writer instead of USB tokens (sorry if that's not what you're talking about). I've found that SanDisk makes nicely priced chips compared to usb tokens.

BTW guys, I found a good deal on home MO drives, I'll link when I get home.

Industructable memory.....

This conversation got me thinking of all the memory technologies I understand and the Space Shuttle came to mind. The older one's use a drum, like those older record players with tubes instead of flat records. Where memory is etched into it. Wouldn't want to be in space and have memory get erased, bad. No Dell's in space, too complicated. Those are located on the ground. Simplicity is bliss when riding atop a few giant rockets. The newer shuttles use something else. Space lab is a bit more advanced since it's not blasting off and burning back into the atmosphere. Check out Odetics, mass memory units make they, hmmm. They make all sorts of things that survive. Advanced war plane flight records for another example.

Found the link again now that I'm at home. It's: http://buyfcpa.com/searchresults.asp?search_id=3

The more I read about MO drives, the more I like them. I mean, seriously, it's perfect for my stuff. The drive itself is $300 or so for the one I'd want and comes with a single disk that's got 2.3gb. A box of 5 disks costs $100. That's only $20 per disk. Let's see...I bought 10 floppies for about $8 at target recently. That's $8 for 14.4 mb of data. $20 for 2.3gb on a MO disk.

So, on floppies, we're paying:
$.55 per mb

On an MO disk, we're paying:
$8.70 per gb
$.01 per mb

Unfortunately, the drive cost desparity is pretty great. I can pick up a crappy floppy drive for $9 at a computer show. To get a MO drive, I'd need to put up about $300. But, considering MO disks are more rugged and reliable than either CD or magnetic media, I think it's worth the up-front cost of getting that drive. AND, since MO is grafted right into windows 95 and up, it acts just like a hard drive or floppy drive, it doesn't require some obscene amount of driver support. It's also grafted into Mac machines too, can't remember the OS versions though. Not sure about linux or using MO drives with it at all though.

The disks come in many different sizes too. I've seen the disks in 230mb, 540mb, 640mb, 1.3gb, and 2.3gb. So, looking at this, you've got some comparable sizes to CDs, Mini-CDs, DVDs, and Zip disks. What amazes me is that these disks are only 90mm (3.5") disks. Being able to store 2.3gb on a highly reliable medium that's the size of a floppy sounds like about the best thing you can do.

Looks promising, I might save some money and invest in one of these for backup stuff. I just got $50 coming off of a light job, so I've got some more to save up, but I think it'll be worth the investment. If I ever do buy and install one, I'll write a review of it up here somewhere.

Hmm, so spilling Beer on CDs will mod the sound? I've never heard of that, which is odd because I make music, and I enjoy pitch bending a lot.

Heh, might have to try that. I'll use Bud Light, at least that piss would have a purpose then. ;)

And, I remember buying these super disks about 2 or more years ago. They look exactly like a floppy disk, except a different design on the metal part. They also fit very easily into a floppy drive, and could hole 120 MBs. They also costed more than a ZIP disk.

I still use ZIP disks. I bought an external ZIP drive when I bought my first computer, and they still work very well. For back ups I use CD-Rs and CD-RW disks, and my network. I use ZIP disks mainly for homework, and quickly moving files from one place to another.

Other than that I use my LAN. If I am moving files between two Windows boxes, I use AIM, and send files with that. If I'm using BSD or Linux, I set up VSFTP or Apache, and download them that way.

Well, anyway, I went to bed at a little after 5 AM, and got up at 7:30 AM, and I'm now going to work, so I'll be back when I get home.