CD-R v. CD-RW

[richarddd]

Which is likely to last longer before becoming unreadable - CD-R or CD-RW?

Apologies if my poor search skills failed to find this or if this is off topic.

[killingspree]

honestly i don't know... anyway, from my personal experience, good cd-r live way longer than cd-rw. mostly i guess it will depends on quality of the media anyway...

cheers

[richarddd]

Have you had either fail? How long did it take?

How does one determine the quality of the media?

[killingspree]

i had both of them fail on me... quite a few years ago i was on a really tight budget so i could only afford cheap media (especially cdr) and quite a few of them crapped out on me in the last couple of years!

cd-rw i made the experience that even small scratches (those that will happen simply by using the rw regularily) will stop the drive from writing to the disk!

the quality of the media is mostly determined by the quality of the dye... i think the absolute kings are those gold-dye cdrs!!
anyway, you can find more on that topic on www.dvdrhelp.com

cheers
steVe