how good is the data reliability with CD ROM and DVD RAM?

[Grant Taylor]

On 7/21/18 9:14 AM, Carlo Pisani via cctalk wrote:
> what is your experience?
I personally have had reasonable success with CD-Rs.

I used Verbatim Blue CD-Rs for general storage back when I had a single 
6.4 GB drive in '98.  I have recently read the contents of all the 
surviving disks with no problems that weren't resolved by a damp 
washcloth gently wiping the underside of the disk.

I do seem to recall I had one disk that failed within a few months from 
what seemed to be fungus or rot.  I never knew.  I got rid of it quickly.

All the other disks that I burned at 1x have lasted the better part of 
20 years.

Honestly, I have more concern about functional CD-ROM drives more so 
than I do the media.  More and more machines I'm around don't actually 
have a drive capable of reading CD-ROMs.

I was also exposed to some people using the El-Cheapo light (faint) 
green CD-Rs and they would end up having problems reliably reading from 
them a week or two later.  I think they usually burned them as fast as 
their drive would allow.  To me, old AOL floppy disks were more reliable 
than the light green CD-Rs burned at high speed.

I would only tolerate light green burned at 1x if I needed to move bulk 
data between machines and networking was not an option.  Once the data 
was there, I considered the CD-R to be dead and frequently physically 
destroyed it.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die