About CD-R media longevity

[RathO]

Ive been looking around a lot about the longevity of my cd-r. Who wants to wake up in ten years with corrupt & dead cdz?

Ive been burning lots of home-made videos on what i recently found to be REAL long-term crap (like the Cursor Colorfull from Gigastorage... and i decided to buy some other cdz, like the Sony ones.

I got the CDR-Identifier little program to tell me exactly what manufacturer made the discs. Here's the info:

Whats on the disk: TDK (http://www.tdk.com/recmedia/cdr/cdrdata/index.html) 80min.700megs CDR
Disk Manufacturer: Ritek Co.
Recording Layer: Dye (Short Strategy; e.g. Phthalocyanine)
Normal Capacity: 702.82MB (79m 59s 70f / LBA: 359845)

Whats on the disk: Cursor Colorful Extreme speed (5 colors)
Disk Manufacturer: Gigastorage Corp
Recording Layer: Dye (Long Strategy; e.g. Cyanine, Azo etc.)
Normal Capacity: 702.83MB (79m 59s 74f / LBA: 359849)

Whats on the disk: Sony CD-R (http://www.mediabysony.com/NASApp/ctsc/personalSubcat.jsp?pSubCatId=53&pCategoryId=36), 700megs Supremas
Disk Manufacturer: Sony Corp
Recording Layer: Dye (Long Strategy; e.g. Cyanine, Azo etc.)
Normal Capacity: 702.83MB (79m 59s 74f / LBA: 359849)

Even referring to this web page (http://alcor.concordia.ca/~talfred/cd-r.html), and this other one (http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_quality.shtml) i still cant determine if my cdz are good to last. Can you help me? :confused:

Also tell me guys what you think about the quality of your cdz, i mean have you burned cdz some years ago and have now trouble with them?

Regards

[MickeyNBK]

You should be able to find some info on www.cdfreaks.com. I had some of the old gold and green Sonys and after a year or so they fogged and became unreadable.

I'd suggest a look at this thread on cdfreaks.com:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42555&highlight=kodak

[NeoNSX]

Sony discs i burned back in 1996 still work. Cheap Princo discs claiming a 75yrs lifespan which i burned 3 years ago already have bad sections and are useless. Personally I think the best combination for quality is brand + dye. (but that is my own personal opinion)

Here's some info i dug up from somewhere ages ago.
It's simpler to understand than your links. Hope it helps.
People with higher-post counts are welcome to disagree. :D


==================================================
The CD-R's color is a good guide to its longevity.

Cyanine Blue-green or distinctly green -- life range from 10 years to as high as 75 years.
Phthalocyanine Usually gold -- reputed shelf life of something like 100 years.
Formazan Greenish gold -- hybrid of both above.
Metallized AZO Dark blue -- a long shelf life, approaching that of phthalocyanine (~100yrs).


In other words, the ratings are as follows:

Green, Blue-Green = Standard
Greenish Gold = Good
Dark Blue = Better
Gold = Best

[smiller667]

The forums at afterdawn.com are a good read for this sort of discussion ...

Re Sony: used to be made by Taiyo Yuden, but no longer. New ones with a Sony mfg ID are reported to be less than great.

If you want long-lived discs, I would probably go for Taiyo Yuden or Mitsui (my first ever CD-R - golden and unlabelled - turned out to be a Mitsui and still plays fine to this day). Kodak used to be nice, but they went out of the CD-R business.

No direct relationship between longevity and dye type, imho (and the post count doesn't really matter here).

[MickeyNBK]

Waaay back in the day I used to buy Taiyo Yuden from www.diskotape.com. This was back in 96 I think, back then there weren't many vendors like today. It was what they recommended and the salesman explained they were the same ones Sony used. Never had an issue with them. Then later on, probably 97 or 98 ish I got some Sony's and they were crap, not sure if it was a bad batch or what. At work our admin started buying Imation discs for us and they never worked right with my burner. 24X discs having to be burned at 2x and then sometimes still failing. I was able to get her to change to Maxell (not a huge selection from the company that's our "corporate standard") and they burn fine and serve the purpose for work.

I haven't bought verbatims since dropping one and having the reflective layer peel off.

Currently I buy and recommend the Taiyo Yudens. I've been buying the Fuji branded Taiyos (just make sure the package states "made in Japan" not a problem since. I've recommended these to several friends that were having write/read issues with various CDS and this solved their issues.

Unfortunately almost all brands of CD are just relabeled. Some are consistent on the manufacturer they buy (like Fuji) from while others take the lowest bidder. Being consistent isn't always good either, if you consistently buy crap.

If you live in the states and there is a Best Buy near you I would recommend watching their sales circular and picking up the Fuji's while they are on sale. That’s about the cheapest way to get Taiyos.

Hope this helps

[smiller667]

As you said, label brands mean precisely nothing, so why do you keep referring to those, saying "Maxell is OK, Imation sucks, this batch of Sonys was not so great" etc.?
These are essentially non-statements, as you yourself pointed out - tools like cdridentifier or the nero tools do provide the mfg id ... so let's keep it at that, OK?
Sorry if I came across as too harsh, nothing personal, but sometimes I just get too much when I see postings saying that label xyz is the greatest when all they do is label discs from 10 different manufacturers :)
To my knowledge, TY has never sold cd-rs under their own name, they were/are always sold under some other brand name. You hardly ever come across Mitsui-labelled discs either (as you already said, Fuji "Japan" is the best way to get those cheap).
"Maxell" CD-Rs have been coming from Ritek, Acer, Taiyo Yuden, and yes, actually a few of them are even from Maxell :).

[MickeyNBK]

I mentioned brand names in case anyone was buying discs retail and to show that some are consistent while others (like Sony) are inconsistent with quality. So far every Fuji I've bought and my friends have bought (on my recommendation) have been Taiyo Yudens. Back when I first started buying CD-Rs Taiyo Yuden did actually sell discs packaged under their name (I still have jewel cases that say Taiyo Yuden). Keep in mind this was before may of the others started making blanks.

While true in most cases when you buy a "name brand" CD-R you almost will never know (before buying and checking the ATIP) who actually made it there are at least a few companies that either consistently rebrand good media while others like (Imation) constantly (at least in my case) rebrand crap. The majority seems to just buy what ever.

If anyone is going out to a retail store to buy CD-Rs your best bet is to go for the Fuji's (just make sure they are made in Japan).

As far as work goes I have very little choice as to what I can buy and the people I work with have no clue as to how to handle discs anyway. I'm lucky if any disc lasts more than 6 months because of either mishandling or being lost.

If you have anything that is so important you can't afford to lose it then make multiple backups with discs from different manufactures (not brands, actually manufacturers). There is no 100% bulletproof guarantee.