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What to do about short CD-R lifespans?

PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 10:38 pm
by will7
This is a follow-up question to an earlier post which cited the study claiming a much shorter than advertised life span for burned cd's.

By the way, that article's subheading is something like
"And don't count on hard disk drives either."

And DVD-R + magnetic tape have their own sets of questions.

Ok-- so you have some cd-r's (good quality media, error checked, blah blah blah.)
What to do? Is the only option to basically check them every so often + reburn them every few years?
Would this degrade the quality at all (for music files)?

PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 10:50 pm
by burninfool
Making copies every couple of years is what I do.
As for degrading quality:digital doesn't degrade like analog does...after a 1000 copies the quality will be the same.

PostPosted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 7:31 am
by redk9258
If CD AUDIO is copied to a copy and that is copied to a copy and so on, you will get degradation. CD AUDIO does not have the same error correction as data CDs.

PostPosted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 1:02 pm
by CowboySlim
redk9258 wrote:If CD AUDIO is copied to a copy and that is copied to a copy and so on, you will get degradation. CD AUDIO does not have the same error correction as data CDs.

Rip audio Cds to hard drive, *.wav is a good choice at the $/Gb today.
Burn the *.wav files to DVD+Rs as data DVDs annually.

OTH, I'm having no longevity issues with my 40 year old 80 column punched cards. :P

PostPosted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 12:49 am
by MediumRare
redk9258 wrote:If CD AUDIO is copied to a copy and that is copied to a copy and so on, you will get degradation. CD AUDIO does not have the same error correction as data CDs.

That's not quite true- audio CD don't have the additional ECC protection that data CDs do, but they do have the built in Reed-Solomon parity bits. You'll probably have problems if the disc shows copious C2 errors. Otherwise if you rip a CD with a tool like Exact Audio Copy, there won't be any degradation.
CowboySlim wrote:OTH, I'm having no longevity issues with my 40 year old 80 column punched cards. :P

Unfortunatley I can't find a card reader for my 42 year old punch cards anymore (outside of a museum) :( and they're a bit warped...

G

PostPosted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 4:36 pm
by CowboySlim
MR, not to worry about lack of mechanical card reader.
You are it!
Just sit at your PC with a stack, read them visually, and type them in to WordPad column by column, card by card, etc.. :P

PostPosted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 5:12 pm
by dodecahedron
CowboySlim wrote:OTH, I'm having no longevity issues with my 40 year old 80 column punched cards. :P

just dip them, toghether with a few CDs and DVDs, into a pail of water, and you're guaranteed to have longevity issues with them ol' punched cards :D
=> make sure your roof is well waterproofed :D